Walkabouts
by Sober Dogs Bore Me
Summary: Post-Leviathan, Taylor is living in a shelter, angry and adrift. A chance encounter puts her on a different course as she struggles to correct previous mistakes, and find a place for herself in this nebulous world of heroes and villains. (AU, post 8.07)
1. Somewhere I have never travelled 1-1

Walkabouts  
Somewhere I have never travelled 1.1

I could feel my bugs crawling all over the shelter. They tumbled as people moved on their mattresses, twisting either to swat at their legs or just in quiet restlessness. It was strange, lying here, hearing the exhalations of what seemed like a thousand bodies and the muffled footsteps of people trying to navigate their way through the beds and belongings that littered the floor.

It had been cleaner, a few days ago, but then a cluster of shelters downtown had gotten flooded by a couple of cracked pipelines. After that, the remaining functional shelters across the city had to accommodate a much larger share of people, even as they struggled to find space for those that were already there.

Initially, low, blue partitions had bordered each cluster of ten or so mattresses, providing an illusion of privacy, of space. They'd been the first to go in the effort to squeeze more people in. After that, the pathways, defined by their lack of mattresses over the blue tarp that spanned the makeshift-shelter, had been filled in. So, all around me now, without pause or break, lay a thousand bodies with bugs that crawled, clambered, slithered and wriggled over flesh and skin that was ridged with bruises or clothes that were slick with sweat, blood, or worse.

It was a warm night. The heat licked against me, pressing and pungent, heavy with human odor. There were fans, but electricity was intermittent. I could see glimmers of night in silvery reflections on the metallic edges and faces of things. And below all that, the crowd of bodies began, with its every smell and movement crashing against my consciousness with all the careless fury of a flood.

And yet, that was not was bothered me the most.

I had read once, however long ago that time felt, about the devastation that the Endbringers left. The pain and the heartbreak.

But nobody really talked about the _inconvenience_ of it all. About how angry you felt when others crossed over that non-existent divide between mattresses, occupying what was clearly your space with their limbs, or in worse cases, their belongings.

The woman beside me was doing exactly that. And I could feel the bugs crawling around her neck.

I twisted, trying to stand. My legs were aching and my arms still felt sore from spending the entire day involved in the relief efforts, but there was no point in lying here like this, when I felt so incapable to shutting out what the bugs around me were broadcasting. It had been a long while since my control had been so frayed.

I tiptoed, trying not to step on people. The bugs gave me a limited topography of the place: I knew where the people were, but the spread of their bodies was not something I could sense, or see. A lady cursed at me as I grazed her leg. Something sharp scratched the underside of my calf.

I stopped. The lights were off, the fans still. I knew the electricity was being routed towards the more critical areas, but that didn't stop the wave of indignation roiling through me. I was nearly blind in here, buffeted by a thousand alien sensations.

I had to leave. I brought a large mass of bugs to me, ants and other fast but inconspicuous insects. They moved in a wave towards the doorway, skittering over people and things, and, in the areas where they weren't clambering up or down, my feet found surer footing. I dispersed them before we reached that lightened crescent, and stepped out into the moonlight.

I was nearly a block away when the lights returned, the air suddenly flowing with currents rather than heavy and still. My bugs conveyed the strange sensation, and I felt the night breeze against my skin while this other sense told me differently. Within a thousand feet around me, amongst the trees, the cracks in the road, and a heated gust I could only assume was fire, were countless bugs, and through them I felt it all, standing beneath that dark quiet sky.

It was calming.

I moved, leafing through the sensations. In the beginning, I had tried to focus on them individually. After all, you could only hold one thought at a time, right? But that wasn't how it worked. It had never really hit me, consciously, and I had just fallen into taking it in all at once, devouring countless different impressions at a time and somehow being able to isolate and understand them all.

If I had a hundred mouths, I often wondered, could I hold a hundred conversations?

Lisa would probably know. Would she have laughed, if I had asked? But that didn't matter now.

Leviathan had left his mark. Not physically—his destruction hadn't directly reached here—but in the way people were sleeping in their cars, and the emergency workers trudging through the streets, waving in trucks carting food and clothing, bed sheets and mattresses. I had helped unload them earlier, and a part of me wanted to help now. But my skin pricked and there were just too many people around me, too many people whose movements my bugs were feeding back into my head for me to stay here.

I more felt than saw a person peel out of that crowd and move towards me.

"Hey, kid." He was a sturdy man, his hair starting to grey at his temples. Holding his flashlight aloft, he fell in step with me. "Not the best time to go walking around here, ya know?"

"I'll be alright."

"Parents?" I shook my head. "Oh. Sorry."

I didn't correct him.

He tried once more, and then, after telling me to stay safe, walked back to where they were unloading supplies. The three there turned towards me after he reached them, and paused a moment before resuming. Their voices felt like whispers and screeches and unintelligible clutter all rolled into one.

It was strange, being cared about even in this cursory way. Almost wrong, but then they didn't know about what I'd done, all that I had betrayed. But that didn't bear thinking about now.

The quiet night around me was roiling with sensations.

I didn't do this often, revel in the sensual side to my power. Bugs didn't feels things the way we did, naturally, but that didn't mean that they didn't register the light drizzle that had suddenly begun, or the soft wind that was making the trees rustle. At first, all that had been an alien mess of sensations, but I'd gotten better at interpreting it now, at contextualizing it and feeling it as I would, had those things been registering against my normal senses. It was far easier than trying to comprehend the words that were being spoken, or trying to see through their small compound eyes. And it meant that walking through that road I was in a hundred places at once, feeling the rain, being warmed by the fire and comforted underneath a thick quilt.

I walked, until the drizzle petered out and the wind, in its absence, grew stronger.

There were people around me here, ambulances rushing across the road, and the sound of distant screams. I had felt this place earlier, walking up the road—the cold, septic hallways of the building—and had begun purging the bugs from it and killing the vermin that had gotten in through cracks in the foundations. There was an air of cold, quiet efficiency. People in white strode across the grass, standing and directing the flow of incoming patients, checking charts and sometimes even replacing the IV bags right beneath the massive eaves atop the doorway.

I moved towards the crest of a small hill that faced the place, a couple of feet away from the road. At my back, the road, a wide expanse of dim yellow broke off to take a long curve towards the compound, passing by the squat walls and through the gate. And finally beyond that, the hospital, which even from this distance seemed to thrum with noise.

In front of me, the light grass grew longer, wilder, until it met the edges of a weald. It was soft, cold to the touch, and slick with the remains of rain. This close to the road I could see the streetlights glimmer along its edges, an entire field of sharp, gleaming blades.

It was liberating how little I could sense. All the bugs in my power were moving towards the trees, skittering over the slick, smooth tiles of the hospital, over the harsh scabrous asphalt of the parking lot and road, and into the wet supple grass. As they left, my awareness in those areas receded, and my senses grew dimmer behind me even as they ballooned out in front. But this urban forest was so much easier to contextualize. After the intricate spaces I had just trudged through, the forest was a simple tune, almost soothing really.

Her voice surprised me, more so because it had been a long while since I'd been surprised like this.

"Hey. Waiting for someone?"

I lifted my head. She was standing beside me looking down with a cigarette held between her fingers. Her features were obscured by the shadow of her hair. My answer stuck in my throat as I recognized her face.

"Okay. From the hospital? Taking a break here or something? I have to admit, this is a nicer area than the parking lot."

I thought for a moment and then nodded. I had been volunteering at a hospital. I could use that to blend in. The bugs were surging, wanting to come to my defense. But there was no point in getting them close to her and suffering from those headaches again.

But the spiders were gathering.

"Mind if I sit?" She didn't wait for an answer.

Could she know? She was being too insistent, approaching me like this. She had healed me after the battle. And while there had been no documented cases of Panacea using her healing to somehow track and identify people, I knew full-well the benefits of keeping some cards up your sleeve.

The spiders were spinning their webs and there were wasps in the leaves. I might not be able to hurt her or let them touch her, but I could restrain and perhaps that would be enough to buy me some time to run away.

But why was she here? Swarming with bugs, the canopy of the trees at the edges of the weald grumbled and shook, as if they too were waiting for an answer.

I remembered, vividly, the wide-eyed look she had shot me after Armsmaster had revealed his part in my initial betrayal. Had she tracked me because of that, because I didn't fit the sharp binary she divided the world into? Or maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe she just wanted to capture me. I had no doubt that all it would take from someone like her would be one touch.

I realized then that I'd already scooted away from her and that she'd tilted her head towards me, frowning at my movements. "Sorry, I know I'm intruding. It's just… been a long day."

I acknowledged her with another nod.

"Ok. Thanks. Want one?" she asked, proffering the cig. The embers from the edge sparked and fell between us. I shook my head and she took another drag, looking disappointed as the smoke came out in wavy lines.

While I'd almost reclined on the slope, she was sitting more hunched up, her knees drawn close to her chest, her belt bag pressing against her thighs. She coughed often and tried to quieten the noise by puffing out her cheeks and dampening the sound in her mouth. And as we sat there, the two things – the cape beside me, and the roiling angry anxious mass of bugs in front – pressed into my mind, accumulating pressure.

She was clumsy with her scrutiny. In my peripheral, I could see her glance my way numerous times, before turning away and taking a short puff of her cigarette and trying to silence her coughs. It was obvious that she had no real experience in a situation like this, which made me wonder whether others from the New Wave were close and observing, ready to intervene. What would be the point of sending her anyway? Did they think that I would be less likely to be hostile with Panacea, rather than somebody overtly threatening like Glory Girl?

Maybe this was less an operation of some kind and more a chance encounter? It would make sense, considering how poorly she was prepared for it and how nervous she seemed.

Finally she turned and extended her hand. "Hey. I'm Amy."

I looked at the extended limb, and then back up at her, watching her redden. There was no way I was touching her, not if she could use that to confirm whatever ideas she had about who I was. She took her hand back after a moment, sighing. Grounding the cig into the grass, she stood. "I'll just… be on my way then."

I turned to watch her leave. It was surprising how hesitant she was. Even in the bank, she'd been a lot more composed and vicious, at least until Lisa had begun speaking. Here? If this was an operation then I was severely outnumbered, and she would know it. Then why—

She paused, and began to walk back towards me. "Wasn't trying to be rude, you know. You just seemed so… sad. Sitting there for so long."

I just stared at her.

"Just wanted to make sure you were okay, you know?"

Subterfuge? It didn't seem like it, not with the way she was fidgeting.

"I'm," my voice came out rough, almost scraping against my throat, "fine."

"Oh, here." She dug into her bag and pulled out a small bottle and offered it to me. I wondered for a moment whether it was drugged, and then dismissed it. That would be too unlikely.

The water wasn't cold, but it made me realize how parched I was and how long it had been since I'd last had anything to drink. "Thanks."

She smiled, taking that as an invitation to begin the strange, halting conversation again. "And I was thinking, considering how you were just," she gesticulated with her fingers towards me, "sitting there, that I could help. Is there somebody in there that needs—"

"No."

"Oh. That's good." She was sitting again, facing towards me this time, close enough that her shoes were almost brushing my legs. "Long shift then?"

"What?" _Oh, right. The volunteer guise._

I mentally prodded myself, in an attempt to keep up.

"It's pretty cool what you guys are doing, helping people, pitching in. I have a friend who's volunteering, like you. She usually unwinds with a movie, though. And a pizza or two."

I stayed still as she spoke, filling the silence in her rushed nervous manner.

"She says it helps, to think of something else after all that." She pointed vaguely towards the hospital. "Something nicer, you know?"

As she continued to speak, it took me a while to get what she was driving at. And though I no longer suspected any deception—she seemed far too nervous and earnest—what she was doing wasn't much less jarring than that.

It was also rude, I thought.

"…so, yeah," she finished, flashing a smile towards me that, in the dim light of the streetlamps, seemed small and hopeful. "What do you think?"

I had no idea; the bugs had stilled.

I should refuse, obviously. It made all kinds of sense, especially since I didn't actually go that way. But the whole idea of it was strange, so unbelievable that I just sat there, and she just fidgeted, as the silence grew more pronounced.

Had this been the secret? It couldn't be—the New Wave could not be so closed minded that Panacea would so deeply fear her sexual orientation being revealed. But if it wasn't that, it was close. Humiliation, shame. Heartbreak.

The seconds ticked by. She was drawing back, slightly. I could see it in the way her shoulders turned, and how her gaze twisted away from me. She had frizzy hair that she'd neatly tied up. There was a soft scent emanating from her—something akin to grass and flowers or thereabouts—but I could still see the beads of sweat on her neck, and the damp spots in her shirt. She had been working. Probably here, or maybe this was her last visit for the night, shoring up the more critical patients before she began again tomorrow.

Despite our encounter at the bank, I couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for her.

"I'm," I began, before pausing. The bugs in the air above us were being rocked by a sudden gust of wind.

I looked up. Glory Girl slammed into the ground, a few feet away, the dust rising in a plume around her feet. She glowered at me, striding up the hill.

"You're a hard person to find, you know that?"

* * *

All comments and critiques are welcomed.


	2. 1-2

Somewhere I have never travelled 1.2

It took me half a second to discard some of the more obvious strategies.

I was already scrambling back, my heel gouging into the earth as I struggled to stand. My bugs surged towards us through branches trembling in the wind.

They didn't notice.

Glory Girl had paused at my retreat and stood staring at me, a vaguely angry look on her face. I could feel my knees quivering under her glare. I should have left the moment Panacea had approached me. This was like the deception that had taken place at school all over again, only the stakes were higher and the intentions more… muddled.

There the brown carrot, here the golden stick.

I could feel my thoughts careening, one half-formed idea breaking apart into another. My bugs were surging, but I'd been keeping them far away, and they couldn't do anything against either of them right now. They might be able to cover my retreat, but something told me I wouldn't get the chance. I needed another way.

Fear and nausea lapped against my mind, tightening the chest, making me lose that control I had so gradually built-up, throughout the otherwise quiet and lovely evening. I was losing myself within the gusts of winds again, feeling the stalks of grass curving beneath my mandibles almost as if they were brushing by my face.

What was happening to me?

I shook my head. Glory Girl had a strange bemused look on her face and was gazing at Panacea now, who was looking back at me with a wide, puzzled gaze.

"Well," Glory Girl began, mocking, "Lovely friends you're making."

"Don't be a…," Panacea trailed off as she began to stand, brushing the dust from her clothes. "Your aura is affecting me too, you know."

"Oh." The aura lessened, and I suddenly felt myself take a large, heaving breath. Immediately I stopped the instinctive advance of the bugs, sending them to another target: the electric poles and the backup power. "Still, look at her," Glory Girl took a step towards me, and I had to stop myself from stumbling back. "Hey, little girl, do you hate capes or is it something personal with me?" She paused for a breath and then, dismissing me with a gesture, turned back towards Panacea. "Nevermind. Now you. Mom's been freaking out, you know? Do you have any idea what time it is?"

Amy stepped back at Glory Girl's advance, her jaw and fist tightening at the sheer hostility radiating from her sister's words. But when she spoke, she was calm, conciliatory. "I'll be fine. You know I can take care of myself."

I could see her visibly flinch at Glory Girl's subsequent snort.

No, Amy wasn't calm. This was something else. Even in the wide-open green she looked cornered, with her head low and her eyes darting towards me and then moving away towards the road. Her shoulders were suddenly tucked in, and she was bending her knees slightly—almost imperceptibly—standing as if on the balls of her feet. She'd drawn her arms across her chest and the off-white coat that she wore seemed to be pulled tight across the front, warding off advances.

It was strange, how slowly my thoughts were connecting, how long it took me to realize how drastically her posture had changed in a moment and what she now looked like. My eyes were shifting between the two superheroes. What had Lisa said? Humiliation, shame, and heartbreak? It still didn't fit.

And I did not want to believe that this was the sort of secret Lisa would exploit.

The two of us had reversed now: I was striding forward while Glory Girl had stepped slightly back, her arms hanging by her side and looking almost sheepish and apologetic. That aura of hers had dissipated.

It had felt different from the bank, in ways that I couldn't clearly think about or articulate. Except, this time Amy had felt it, too.

It was reckless, I knew, moving so close to Panacea like this, without the protection of my costume. But I couldn't not do it, not when the situation looked so wrong to me, so fucked up.

And so familiar.

My bugs were still circling, moving around us to the other targets that I'd registered on the way to this hill. Still, unless this was some sort of massive deception, this wasn't about me at all.

"Hey," I spoke softly, trying to catch Amy's eye. "You alright?"

"She's fine," Glory Girl interjected. "You're always just fine, aren't you, Ames. It doesn't—"

"Shut up." I clenched almost as soon as I'd spoken the words, half in fear—this was Alexandria junior, after all—but a part of me felt this strange sort of elation that I couldn't precisely define. I'd seen Amy flinch at the derision in, what I supposed, had once been a nickname, and it echoed to me in such horribly familiar ways.

"Listen, you little—"

Amy was looking at me now, her gaze suffused with that trepidation you felt when you stood at the edge of something, and wondered whether you should take the leap. I wanted to take her hands, tell her that she shouldn't cow like this, not even to people like Glory Girl.

But that was wishful thinking, wasn't it? In the end, people like _her_ were exactly the sort you had to cow to, unless you were willing to go all in with your defiance.

Glory Girl had paused in her tirade and stood there, about two feet from us, just staring. A few of the faster bugs had reached the first target – the standby generator – and were clambering up its metal frame to find spaces to move through _into_ the object. Still, I wished I could bring them closer, if only to augment my sense of what was happening around me. I hadn't felt this helpless in a long time.

And because I was keeping both eyes peeled on the major threat, I didn't see Amy clutch one of my hands. But suddenly, short moments after her fingers touched mine, I felt—it was hard to describe it—good. All my aches were gone and for a moment I almost felt lightheaded, euphoric with the absence of pain. I was, I realized belatedly, smiling. I could run a marathon.

I clutched Amy's hand tight.

The absence of pain startled me. I had become used to these aches, considering the way I was living and the injuries I'd sustained. My bugs stilled, in the middle of chewing on wires, and the immediate situation faded from the forefront of my mind as I luxuriated in how good I felt, how free and light.

In those hazy – moments? Minutes? – she turned towards me, and muttered, "Thanks." There was a soft smile on her face, the kind that I'd imagined Brian occasionally shooting at me across the table in the morning, as we fueled up after a useful sparring session.

When I came back to the world, Glory Girl was speaking again. My thoughts were clearing, expanding in scope.

"Ames," Glory Girl was hesitant, and so much softer than she had just been, "I know I've been a…." She trailed off, looking at our clutched fingers and then towards her sister. Amy had turned away from me, and was staring back at her intently the whole time, almost wary in the way she was observing her every action. What was she looking for, I wondered? Was she wondering whether Glory Girl would go on the offensive again?

The three words played in my head, as confusing as they'd been before.

For a moment, I wished Lisa was here, if only to give me a better read on what I was missing. And all the while, our hands remained tightly clasped. I was so acutely aware of the press of her fingers – so much rougher than my own. It would take a second for Panacea to do whatever she wanted to my very biology, and yet I didn't want to let go.

Why?

I could not answer.

Bugs swarmed in their confused and restless paths around us.

After a while, Glory Girl spoke. "There's a cafeteria down there, somewhere," she said, tilting her head towards the hospital. "Wanna go have dinner? I know you didn't eat."

"Hospital food." Amy scrunched her nose, her brown hair tickling the sides of her face.

Glory Girl smiled hesitantly back at her. "I could always carry you guys to that place you like downtown."

Amy rolled her eyes. "It's like 2am, Vicky."

Even though their tone seemed a bit exaggerated given what a transpired a moment earlier, like when I was trying to cover up an uncomfortable topic with Dad, I thought about pulling my hand back, giving them space. But Amy's fingers pressed into mine and she turned towards me, "What do you think? This cafeteria has a guy who makes an absolutely brilliant soufflé. Maybe there's some left over for us?"

"I…" I paused. I wanted to go with them. There was something about the way she had reacted earlier that was niggling at me, drawing up old memories about school and Emma and how I'd been powerless to act. I wasn't exactly that, but it was similar. And besides, I was hungry. "I don't really have the cash for—"

Amy waved my protestations off by stepping a bit ahead and tugging at my arm. "It's on me," she said. Beyond her, Glory Girl was still watching our every interaction, confusion flitting across her face. Still, she put up a half-smile when Amy turned towards her, and that was enough for now. "Let's go, sis?" Glory Girl said. Amy nodded.

Feeling like I was leaping off the edge of a cliff, I began to walk.


	3. 1-3

**Somewhere I have never travelled 1.3**

It was astounding how much difference Amy's touch made. That euphoria had taken time to clear and now I was feeling much more centered again, more like myself. As I walked down the slope with Amy beside me, I began to examine my recent actions.

_So many mistakes._

In my fatigue, my thoughts had latched onto simple and singular directives, without really considering their consequences. Initially, I'd purged the grounds of bugs, without thinking whether their absence would be noticed. When Glory Girl had ambushed us, my power had clamped onto the aggressive response despite its futility. And as soon as the crippling effect of her aura had faded, I'd consciously directed my bugs towards the electric utilities. I could still feel them skittering along wires they had begun to fray.

_If I had succeeded…._

I wrenched my mind from the thought, taking in the world again, my gaze moving down to the clasped arms, to the side-profile of Amy's face staring stiffly ahead, and then to what she was gazing at: Glory Girl's angry stride, and the way she kicked off the grass and over the short divider that separated it from the road. In front of us, the grey white facade of the hospital was coming into focus.

I began to move the bugs again.

They had stopped, earlier, in the middle of their task. I hadn't made them stop, not consciously at least. But they had.

_Why?_

The bugs were all around us now, marching into spaces they'd vacated. I could sense them move, hear the vibrations that rocked their tiny bodies like gale-force winds, and see a painful, fragmented picture of the world; but it wasn't overwhelming. It wasn't disorienting, or tiring, as it had been the last couple of days.

Had Amy's touch somehow…_ healed_ that, too?

It was a cloudy night and the cone of light emanating from the streetlamps should have been dotted with insects, but wasn't. Had they noticed it? Would they notice it if I reintroduced the bugs now? Amy's touch had made my murky thoughts seem almost limpid, and I could again make their endless noise recede from the forefront of my mind. And in its ebb focus on the fingers that clutched mine, and the strange predicament that I had stumbled into.

I felt Amy's hand tighten. Glory Girl was crossing the road, and despite her earlier, almost apologetic exchange with Amy, she was still keeping her distance. "I hate it when she does this," Amy groaned. I could feel the pull of her arm slacking, as the hill leveled off. "Crossing the road without looking. Did you see how close the ambulance was?"

I hadn't noticed: I didn't really pay attention to that sort of thing anymore. "She can't get hurt, right?"

Amy glanced at me, before looking at the road. "No. But those who crash against her might."

_Oh._

Glory Girl was standing on the other side, under a streetlight that highlighted another detail I hadn't picked up on earlier.

She wasn't wearing her costume.

How had I not picked up on this before? The couple of times I'd seen her she'd been immaculately dressed, with a bright smile and a costume that accentuated every unfairly-endowed curve she had. If you tried not to focus too much on the little details of how she could bench press a truck, she seemed like the perfect embodiment of a thousand puerile fantasies.

Not so much now. Her hair was almost ratty in the mess it made as it tumbled down her head. I remembered seeing faint dark smudges around her right eye—makeup hastily removed, perhaps? She wore a rumpled, billowing shirt tucked tightly into a pair of jeans that reached above the ankle. It all seemed much too dowdy for somebody like Glory Girl.

_Maybe she gets tired of playing up the image all the time?_

In my peripheral, I could see Amy frowning, her gaze still fixed on her sister. The three words echoed. Perhaps Glory Girl knew something horrible that Amy had done? That could explain her aggression, and the meekness that Amy displayed in front of it. She was ashamed. In the aftermath of Lisa, the secret had come out and had wrecked their relationship. So now, in an effort to avoid talking with her family, Amy stayed out in the night and struck-up conversations with strangers.

That… that struck a chord.

Or perhaps, this was just two sisters fighting. It wasn't like, before she did what she had, Emma and I had never been angry at the other. "I think," I said, trying to choose my words carefully, "your sister is still angry at you."

"Hmm? Oh… No." She shook her head. "She's not really angry, you know. There's some other stuff, not about tonight, that's leaving her a bit conflicted. Not knowing what side to choose." Amy shrugged. "She'll work it out."

"And if she doesn't?"

Amy looked at me strangely at that and then, glibly, added, "Then she doesn't." Dropping my fingers, she began walking faster. "You know, I'm actually pretty hungry."

I trailed behind her.

Again, I wasn't thinking. It wasn't like people would love to be interrogated by a stranger about family. But what else could I have said? Glory Girl hadn't exactly been shy about declaring how protective she felt about her sister. And yet, tonight her aura had affected Amy too.

Was that because Amy thought of Glory Girl as her enemy, or the other way around?

Not questions I could ask. For a moment I wondered whether this was how Rachel felt, lost in a mess of rules and signals that always seemed to disallow the direct, obvious course of action.

Still, at least Amy's sudden disinterest afforded me the opportunity to run.

"Hey. You coming?" I looked up. She had stopped a couple of paces in front of me, right beside the grey barrier between grass and road. Her tone was, as before, more than a bit uncertain. "You want to go somewhere else?" There was a vulnerability in her gaze that I knew would not be mirrored in mine: my long face didn't really pull that off quite well. Taking my pause as hesitation, she continued, "A hospital isn't really the best place for this sort of thing, but I don't know what else would be open right now, you know?" She was tumbling over her words, and they were washing over me like the spray of breakers against the shore.

It was a sudden and heady feeling. Bitter too, in its way. _Nobody had ever talked to me like this._

Brian may have, but that did not matter anymore.

I could remember my mother's words, as we stood by that small green lagoon, feeling the froth of the waves between our toes. I had been clutching at her legs, even as Emma shrieked at me to come join her. _Oh darling, _my mother had said, bending and kissing me on the forehead, _you'll regret it so much more if you don't._ Another time, another world. Still, it all applied in its own way, didn't it? I'd taken a jump —with Lisa, with Brian— and I didn't regret that. Maybe the circumstances that drew us together and the choices that I'd had to make. But not the people.

Besides, if Amy could identify me with a touch I was already screwed. Better to get out of these open grounds and into the hospital, where there were people and structures to further limit Glory Girl's options.

And increase my own.

"No, it's good." I smiled. "Didn't really expect to end tonight with a cape like her angry at me. Got a bit freaked out."

Her lips quirked at that, as she hopped over the barrier. "It's okay. She can be scary."

"Yeah."

"And besides," she added, with a lilting tone as we began to cross the road. "You'll definitely be ending tonight with me."

"Err…." My mouth opened. I tried and mostly failed at not blushing.

"What, No!" She stood stock-still and absolutely mortified in the middle of the road. "I meant you'll be having dinner with me. Not, you know…."

I grasped her forearm and pulled. She stumbled a bit, but at least she began walking. "I get it," I muttered as we reached the other side. The truck passing behind us blared loudly and gave me opportunity to bring bugs closer to us, tagging them both. She looked back at the road with frightened eyes, before turning back towards me.

"I wasn't insinuating anything; just trying to be witty since you said—"

"It's okay, I get it." I cut her off, smiling at her. She was still blushing and that just made the light dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks stand out more.

Glory Girl interrupted us, striding back and demanding, "What happened? What did you—"

"It's nothing," said Amy. If the deepening glow on her face was any indication, she felt even more self-conscious about her gaffe in front of her sister. "Just… it's nothing."

Glory Girl turned her suspicious gaze my way and I just shrugged back. She let out a huff. "Let's just get there before all the food's gone, okay?"

I felt her glance on me again and again as we trailed behind Glory Girl, passing the gates of the hospital and striding up its lawns, towards the foyer. The wail of ambulances passing by us drowned out any possibility of conversation. Ahead of us, the foyer teemed with bodies, with people in coats like Amy's intercepting and directing the flow of patients. As we neared, I could see Amy straighten, the slight slouch in her shoulders and hips giving way to a more confident gait. And yet, her gaze flitted over me, unable to stay away.

It was strange, to be wanted like this. If it were true. I wasn't particularly self-deprecating, but I knew I shouldn't be striking for somebody whose sister set her up with teenage millionaires. Especially not the way I was looking these days. And Lisa had tried so hard in weaning me off these kinds of clothes.

Still, I guess none of us were looking our best at the moment.

If Glory Girl seemed unkempt, Amy was plain dirty, her coat splotched on both sides with that peculiar rust-brown color that dried blood took, and streaked in the back with dew. Yet, Glory Girl's contours announced themselves loudly, despite their shabby wrapping. As we entered the foyer, I could feel a dozen heads turn our way, mostly towards her.

Conversations flowed around us, between the EMTs carting the injured from hospitals downtown, and the nurses and doctors admitting them. I had a bug on each of them, marking their positions and movements to build a map of this place—something that I had neglected to do when I'd initially expunged them. The details collated in the back of my mind, being weaved into a coherent picture.

Amy's touch had done much more than just make me feel good: it had healed my fraying control. I had known that powers could become stronger, given certain conditions. Had I been feeling so wretched and tired that the inverse had happened? If so, was my finer control because I was now feeling less mentally exhausted that I had been before?

Or had she affected my mind?

Her voice interrupted my thoughts. "What?" she asked, leaning into me. At my blank look, she added, "You were staring." She had a grin on her face, and her shoulder brushed against mine as we meandered our way through the crowd. Everything she'd been doing pointed towards some sort of attraction she held towards me. Had she made me reciprocate?

No, I decided, considering the contours of her body under the brighter lights of the hospital. Here, there was a confidence to her that made her straighten, seem larger and more sure of her strides. And yet, the swell of her breasts, the curve of her neck and the fullness of her lips – none of them aroused in me anything but a faint irritation as I noted how favorably they compared with my own.

Still, I had moved closer to her, had wanted to hold her hands. I didn't think I was attracted to her, but I had been responding to her obvious flirtations. Appreciating them, even.

What was I doing here?

As we neared the doors, a nurse called out, rushing towards us with a large chart held in one hand, and her phone in another. Amy's eyes narrowed in irritation, as she stepped away from me to greet her. "Mary," she said. Glory Girl, I noticed, was watching her sister intently again.

Mary for her own part looked rather apologetic as she began, "Mark—you met him, right?—did something a bit stupid earlier to a post-op. The meds he accidently gave are messing up the old man's system. I was hoping—"

Panacea's voice was sharp. "He _gave_ the meds? Doesn't he need approval for that?"

The nurse nodded, her flaxen hair bobbing as she did. "It was so stupid, but you know… We've given the patient some drugs, but it's not flushing the meds out, and there's a bit of a waiting list right now for the more extensive treatments, not to mention approvals and an investigation into what happened. I was hoping, Amy, that you could help." She was speaking so fast, it almost seemed like she was babbling. I could see the nurse's dilated pupils and the sweat beading on her neck.

Echoing my thoughts, Amy asked, "Mary, didn't your shift end hours ago?"

"I was trying to reach you, but your phone was switched off and Victoria—Hey, Victoria!—said that you weren't home yet and I…," she paused, taking a deep, slow breath. "I'm making a fool of myself for this guy, aren't I?"

"Haven't we all." Amy grinned at her. "Come here." Clasping Mary's extended fingers between her own, Amy tilted forward and began to speak quietly into her ear. I resisted the urge to move closer to them.

The foyer around us was mostly a stark and plain shade of grey, with ambulances on the asphalt at one end, and a long string of wide doorways leading into the lobby at the other. People were streaming between both ends, far fewer than there had been earlier in the night. Amy and the nurse looked exceedingly intimate beside me, leaning into each other.

People were glancing at us as they passed. I could feel them turn, and their curiosity made me uncomfortable, even if it were directed at me only in passing. Even Glory Girl, standing with a smirk and folded arms a few feet away from us, was intently observing. Still keeping her distance.

A moment later, Mary moved, thanking Amy with a wide hug. She was, I realized, actually quite beautiful now that her eyes weren't darting all around the place and her skin didn't look nearly as wan as it had before. Her severe nose blended well with her sharp features and gave her, if not a sense of approachability, an aloofness that I knew people found profoundly attractive. As she left, Glory Girl ambled towards us, still smirking.

"You know, sis," she began, in a dawdling tone, "I always thought you had so few guy friends 'cause you were shy. Turns out I was looking in the wrong place."

Amy shot back, "You always are." Ignoring Glory Girl's offended "Hey!" she turned towards me, "I just realized I don't know your name."

Glory Girl interjected, "Seriously? After all that?"

Frowning, Amy turned towards her chuckling sister. "Vicky… could you go wait in cafeteria, please?"

"Yeah, yeah," Glory Girl replied, waving it off. "At least I know their name before I… hold their hands!"

I stared at her as she left. Even she, so much more beautiful than Amy was, left me with nothing but faint admiration in her wake. I felt her walk deeper into the place, going through the doors and then turning left, her pace steady.

It was only then did I realize what her departure meant.

I could leave. If Glory Girl was not worried about leaving her sister alone with me, then she either she trusted Amy to handle herself or she didn't see any reason to be alert. Through my bugs, I was tracking every person in the compound and none seemed to be moving or glancing towards us with an unusual regularity.

I could leave, if I wanted. An excuse, maybe? Or by using the many webs I'd gotten my bugs to make. But then, that would probably compromise my identity, which by now I was pretty sure they didn't know of.

And there were other reasons to stay.

With Glory Girl no longer in my sight, I turned back towards her. She was frowning, for some reason. I took a deep breath.

"Hey, I'm Anne."

-0-

Glory Girl's eyes flicked towards me as I sat, a half-eaten sandwich on her plate. "I'm guessing," she said, "that Amy will take a while."

"She said she'd be here in a couple of minutes. Just slip in and out." I could feel her moving two floors above us.

"Yeah, I somehow doubt that." She slid the plate towards me. "She comes here a lot. Somebody's bound to recognize her."

The tables in the cafeteria were irregularly arrayed, providing people plenty of space to navigate in between them. There was a sense of quiet here, and despite the low murmur of conversation and the occasional scrape of plates against the tabletops, the very air was still, hushed. A few old men navigated gingerly between tables, but mostly, the people reclining against chairs or bowing forward into the tables they were sitting at were young, people with movements hesitant and painful, as if old age had secretly descended.

I turned back towards Glory Girl. "That won't be the worst thing. Not here."

She surveyed me for a moment, before waving at the food. "Have some. You said you were hungry."

I eyed the thin plastic wrapped sandwiches. "Thanks," I eventually replied, unwrapping one and gingerly taking a bite.

"Didn't mean to scare you earlier, you know." She was gazing at me, her voice measured, almost nonchalant. "Amy wasn't answering and her phone and…. You know how this city is these days, with the Merchants and all."

_Oh. Was that where her aggression had come from—fear for her sister's safety?_ "It's okay."

"She got hurt a couple of days back. Did she tell you that?" I shook my head. "Yeah. Some guy stabbed her because she couldn't save his wife."

"What?"

"It was stupid. She wasn't even _there_. We got her this military guy to shadow her after that, because for some reason she doesn't want family to do it. And then tonight, when I call, the guy's sleeping… And not because he fell asleep on the job."

The sequence of events were cohering now, making more and more sense as Glory Girl spoke. Upstairs, Amy had stopped at the side of the corridor with Mary.

"Then I see you guys, just _standing _there, you know. Thought she snuck out to meet you or something, absolutely ignoring all those safety protocols we'd made, like picking up the fucking phone." She signed, and the exhaustion was mirrored in her half-lidded, slightly bloodshot eyes. "As if the rest of it wasn't complicated enough. So, yeah, didn't mean for that."

"It's okay." I waved her apology aside. "She'd said you were conflicted about things."

"What," Glory Girl said, intently now. "She told you?"

For a moment, I considered stringing that along to try and get her to reveal what had happened. But that idea sort of fizzled out as I thought it through. "Nothing," I relented. "Just that there was something. Nothing specific."

"Oh. Yeah, stuff happened, you know, with the Endbringer and she's just refusing…" Victoria stopped, and leaned back on her seat, brushing the hair from her face. "All that's family. This… this is something else." She shook her head. "It doesn't make sense." She gestured towards me, adding, "I should have known something this big about my sister, shouldn't I?"

"This big?"

"About you, and, well, the whole 'liking the girls' thing. She's never even _hinted_ at it, you know? But she's my sister…. I should have known, right?" She waited there, gazing expectantly at me.

Was she waiting for me to reassure her in some way? That felt strange. But then, as far as she knew I was just a girl her sister was trying to… flirt with. "Not if she didn't want you to," I offered.

"Why wouldn't she? How does it even matter anymore? Haven't you told your family?"

I almost laughed at that. I'd told my dad nothing, aside from telling him I was alive.

Still, she was right in her way. It wasn't something I'd really considered, but sexuality wasn't a big deal anymore, and hadn't been for a while. Not with Legend. And especially, not in a family of capes. Those three words made less sense than before.

"Maybe it's recent?"

She contemplated that for a moment. "Makes sense," she finally said, her words ponderous as if she were thinking out aloud. "She has been distant for a while now. Ever since that stupid little bank thing."

_There._ That was confirmation. This was about some secret that Lisa had uncovered, something humiliating and huge, and not something as trivial such as a newfound sexual orientation.

Absently, I tracked Amy's movements, as she finally came into the lobby. Exhaustion seemed to tickle my senses again, and the bugs moved sluggishly around her.

The clues were more coherent now. By bringing it up, Lisa had somehow made Amy wary about her secret, and that had caused friction between the sisters, and maybe even the family. But where did the fear that Amy had displayed fit in? Had she mucked things up with her family so badly in trying to hide that secret that her own sister would leverage her aura against her? Or was this concern, this confusion some sort of ruse on Glory Girl's part?

After all, and I didn't even have to remind myself of this, Emma could do this too, asking me if I needed to freshen up after dumping some filthy concoction over my head.

Glory Girl was sitting slightly tilted on her seat, gazing into the distance. Frowning, she clutched at the remains of a sandwich. Was she as in the dark as she seemed to be? I couldn't really think of any reason she might have to try to deceive me.

But then, I couldn't think of reasons for Emma either. And with that blonde hair and perfect smile, and that aggression she had displayed when Amy had been isolated, she seemed so much like Emma that I was unable to discount it, not even after the almost teasing way in which the sisters had interacted.

But it still didn't _fit_, not with the kind of concern Glory Girl was displaying in front of me.

Was I imagining this? Trying to create some sort of mission out of thin air, something to distract myself, to focus on matters other than what I'd lost? All I had to go on were Lisa's words, but Lisa could lie, and Amy… she could fool herself into thinking that her changing sexuality could horribly alter other things, too.

Insecurity was something I was familiar with.

I wasn't suited for this. This sort of thing was Lisa's domain, for people who could intuit truths from within the shifting myriad of possible interpretations with as little to go on as a couple of words and a tremble in the shoulders.

Mom had been good at this. She had just _known._

I… didn't.

I stood up, fully resolved to pay whatever I had to and leave. Amy was standing outside the cafeteria doors, as if steeling herself to enter. Her face, tremulous and hopeful, resurfaced in my mind. Her attraction towards me had left me feeling better about myself than I had in weeks, and for a moment I hated myself for wanting to leave her like this, in the middle of it all.

That's when I felt it: a bug around her blinked out of my sense, as if it had died. It happened all the time, but this death was sharp, sudden and almost felt like a physical shock.

_Did she just use her power to kill it?_

I tried to focus on the bugs I had around her, but it was like trying to see something with the sharp afterimage of the sun in your eyes.

Only then did she enter the cafeteria. She was frowning, and I knew the jig was up.

"Victoria," Amy said, "we have a problem."

* * *

All comments and critiques are welcome.


	4. Interlude 1

**Somewhere I have never travelled Interlude 1**

The quiet tragedies got you, in the end.

She was tending to Mark when she felt it. It was a subtle thing, a tingle in the back of the head that went downwards and spread over the arms. Piloerections, she belatedly thought. _Goose bumps._

She turned. With a familiar scowl, Victoria was entering through the doorway, her teeth clenched and a piece of paper dangling from within her fingers. Her face went blank as she caught Amy's gaze. After a moment of waiting for her to say something, Amy turned back and resumed, keeping the glass of water close to the plate, far from the edge of the bedside table tucked beneath the unresponsive spread of Mark's arms. It was better for it to fall into the food than to fall onto him.

The silence spread, suffocating every word Amy wanted to utter. She could feel Victoria's gaze boring into her back, as the goose bumps became uncomfortable in their spread and intensity. This wasn't the first time she had felt them in Victoria's presence.

Not hardly.

"Mark," she spoke, bending slightly at the knee to be on level with him, "I know you're tired. But you need to have lunch." He was, as was usual for him these days, hardly responsive. His eyes blinked, and there was the occasional twitch on his face, around the mouth as his tongue curled to the roof and air hissed out. It had taken her a while to understand, but she was sure that he was trying to imitate them, almost like a child would. He sat there, barely able to walk, but his eyes tracked them and his halting attempts at speech progressed from simple sibilant noises to the more complex vowel sounds as he tried to bandage the hazy remains of his memories.

He was never going to recover but he would get better. She could already see it, as muscles that were slack a day before became active, though in rudimentary ways. Still, it had been two days since Leviathan had struck, and two days since she'd refused to heal her father's mind.

What did that make her?

She had reasons, of course, a whole forest of them. And if the details—a kid caught at the edges of a tinker-bomb, a father unable to walk or talk anymore—of what she sacrificed to keep the entire edifice became too heavy, she would have to deal with that too.

Mark ate slowly, the viscous food dribbling over his chin and onto the bib. His eyes were turned away from hers, focusing on the wall, wide and almost—

"Amy." Her sister's exhausted, plaintive tone reached her like something out of a dream. Victoria hadn't spoken to her since the initial blowout, two days ago. Two days of having Carol looming beside her, asking her to explain in that clipped, cutting tone that had long become familiar. She knew what was coming. Still, it was a sort relief, given the source.

"They got some more results today. It's… bad." Mark closed his lips around the flat of another spoon. She waited for a moment, before beginning to extract it gently. "But you already know that."

"He's getting better. You can see that, can't you?" Another spoon, another pause behind her. Where was Carol, she wondered? Saying no to her was always easier.

"I can see that you're not healing him."

"I can't—"

"I've asked around, you know. Doctors, a couple of professors. How do you make the pain go? Endorphins, right? Well, they all tell me that those are made in the brain and the only way to make more is if you affect the brain directly. They all tell me that you should be able to do this, given the capabilities you've displayed."

There was silence after that. The spoon sat still, between Mark and her. His eyes moved into hers, wide, with faint glimmers of understanding. The soft, viscous food settled into the bowl of the spoon and dripped over the rim.

"Sorry," she muttered, moving it closer to his face but his lips had closed.

Softly, Victoria continued, "You do it for so many people, Ames. _Criminals_, even. I can't… understand why you wouldn't do it for dad."

The emphasis on the word made her turn, her hand brushing Mark's, and she stood, letting the spoon clatter onto the table. Her legs burned from bending, but she could bear that. That was nothing compared to what Victoria had just said. She tried to keep the accusation from her voice, but it spilled out anyways. "_You_ talked to them?"

Victoria was wearing only parts of her costume, standing beside the wall, almost as far as it was possible to be from her and still in the room. "I did, Ames," she said. "I wanted to understand, to see what you were so scared of."

"You could have asked me, you know?"

"I could have." Victoria nodded along with her, stepping closer. "I haven't been thinking right. All this," she gestured wide, "it's so messed up, Ames. And just the thought of losing another person after Dean, after Eric and Neil—of losing Dad—I couldn't think beyond that."

"He's my dad too."

"I know," Victoria was speaking softly, coaxing, "But you said no. And you've never explained, but I've asked before, you remember? When that lady begged you to heal her kid and you came back crying. You didn't explain then, either, just said that you won't do it."

"It was enough for you, then."

"Well, it's not, now," Victoria shot back. Lapsing into silence, she just stood there, her arm clasped upon a chair.

Amy turned away first. Mark had sagged into the sofa, his eyes closed. Sleeping.

Sorry, she wanted to mutter. _Sorry, dad_. She didn't want him to hear this.

"Why don't you say anything? You've been so silent, so quiet, I don't…. Just tell me what you're thinking? What you're so scared of? Do you think it will hurt you, if you try to heal the brain? Do you think you think you'll mess-up, somehow? Just tell me Ames, and I promise we'll get through it. Find a way—"

"I won't be able to stop."

"What?"

Amy opened her eyes and faced her sister again. "I think I won't be able to stop."

Victoria was staring at her. The anger had slipped from her face, leaving her eyebrows pressed tight into the bridge of her nose, with her lips forming that little quirk that appeared at the side of her mouth whenever she found something confusing, or ludicrous. Amy knew them all: she was well-versed in the vocabulary of her sister's responses, of her face, of the movement of her arms, of the reaching, inviting heave of her chest.

She shook her head, almost wanting to laugh. Victoria was using her aura. She did that, more often than she realized. Often, Amy let her, luxuriating in the feel of it. It was easier then. She felt she could let go of all the fetters that tied her down, and stay cocooned within its heady call. Of course, when it mattered, when the urge to brush her hands across that wide, soft, open expanse of skin made her toes dig into the ground to keep herself from rushing in—then she stepped back, she feigned.

"Stop it, Victoria," she said, almost breathless. It had been two days since her sister had spoken to her, two days for the fire to swell. That desire burned her. Left her gasping in the middle of the night, with slick, cool fingers clawing against her thighs, riding out the trembles.

Victoria continued to look at her, confused.

Amy needed to leave. The bathroom was ten steps away from them. It would take a second, and then, release. She repeated, "Stop the aura; you know I'm immune."

"What? Oh." The urge abated and a large part of her did not want to let it go. "Sorry, didn't realize… sorry." Victoria took long sudden steps and clasped her shoulders. "What do you mean by 'not stopping'? What do you think you'll do, Ames?" Amy struggled in her grasp, needing to move away from the fatal closeness of her. "What are you doing? Do you think I'll hurt you?"

What could she possibly say? Victoria's face was so close to hers, her eyes wide and confused and devastated. Amy wanted to step in, press her lips against her full mouth, and kiss the tears that were now beading at the edges of her eyes away.

Victoria let her go, stepping back. "I don't understand it, Amy? What happened to you? How could you possibly think I'll hurt you? Even if you don't heal Dad…."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Does it matter?" Amy's gaze was locked onto the floor, and she's stepped back, once, twice, but the scent still remained, still swirled around her. She was immune. She chanted the words in her mind, trying to will them in being. It had been a good excuse in the start, when she'd first noticed the intensity of her reactions to her sister. She was immune—don't look any further. But that was stupid, wasn't it? But nobody noticed, because the only one who was looking at her was Victoria.

"Of course it freaking matters!" Victoria was loud now. A chair cracked and slivers of shattered wood came arching down close to her feet.

"It doesn't. I can't—won't. There are lines I can't cross. Those endorphins? That's just adding chemicals. I don't touch the brain."

"Bullshit." Finally, Amy looked up. Two distinct tear tracks gleamed on her sister's cheeks. "You find out what's wrong, diagnose it, don't you? You're telling me you make those thing up, too?"

_Oh._ "That's not the same—"

"It's exactly the same." Victoria was pacing now, her feet leaving little cracks in the wood. Carol would have to get the floor fixed again. Good for her, Amy thought. She deserved it.

"It's really isn't." Amy paused, taking deep breaths. There were doors all around her and she had to use them before she did something they would never come back from. A part of her wondered at the frantic intensity of her feelings. But not for long. "You've crossed so many lines, Victoria, and the only reason you're here, instead of being held in a containment center somewhere is because I've helped you avoid the consequences. But you can't do that for me—no one can. So if I do that, if I break these rules I've made for myself and do what you do—there won't be any coming back from it."

Victoria looked at her with a strange unrecognizable expression on her face. "So that," she finally said, chuckling a bit in that wheezing way, as if she were having trouble breathing. "That's what you think of me."

Amy moved forward. "No, no, I'm just…." She stopped. How could she explain it? Those were just words, excuses, like everything she did. The people she healed, the ones she didn't, it all came from that secret core of her that Victoria filled absolutely. And she would do anything to keep that a secret, to keep it from being discovered and destroyed.

It hit her a moment later. It was a gradual thing, the transformation of this exultation that she felt in her sister's presence into doubt, fear and a desire for abject submission. Her sight seemed to waver, and she stared blinking at the sight of her sister's limbs, the smooth supple deadly terrifying merciless reach of her fingers. They could rend her heart out with a careless thought.

In many ways, they already had.

Victoria stood over her, glorious in her pain. Her eyes streamed and her mouth snarled, twisting into words. "Get out!"

Victoria had used her powers, and it had hurt her. Amy stood, shaking in the sudden adrenalin coursing through her limbs. _Flight._ She almost stumbled back, before rushing to the door.

Distance and sunlight hit her like the strike of cool water against burning skin. Blinking rapidly, the first thing she noticed, other than the bright disk of the sun, was Carol leaning against the car, a strange expression frozen on her face.

"I hope y-you're happy," Amy spat, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

Carol just stood there, bowing her head away from Amy's gaze, saying nothing as Amy began to run away.

-0-

The tragedies hid between the high notes, in the long silences, the low keys. She stood in the vast elevator of the hospital beside a gurney and tried not to look at her hands. Nobody had stopped her after she'd rushed out of the room, the patient's blood still slick on her fingers. What did he have? She wondered for a moment. But it didn't matter. And the next patient—the lady with empty eyes? Amy already knew she wouldn't be able to help her.

The nurse carting the dead man eyed her. She wasn't wearing her costume; she hadn't worn it yesterday, either. It was probably still lying in the basement somewhere, dirty and discarded. She wiped the blood on her fingers against the coat Mary had been kind enough to lend.

It didn't matter. Victoria donned her costume to project an image, but hers only conveyed the lack of one.

Still, she helped. She healed. And those she wouldn't, she spent a moment with the families, trying not to roll her eyes as they prayed. It was almost reflex, by now. She couldn't acknowledge their gratefulness, smiling faintly and shuffling out of the room.

It had been over a day. She'd imagined, in the start that her family would come. But as the hours ticked past and her hands grew weary, even that had to give way to the realization of what had happened.

Victoria had used her power on her. And it had hurt. She could feel the edifice of her life collapsing.

She'd known betrayal before: Mark did it with casual ease, in the ebb of every one of his depressive cycles. Her body did it, somehow betraying her secret to Tattletale, that fateful day in the bank. And now….

It didn't matter. The elevator clanged open into the crowded lobby. She fell into the crowd, letting their noises brush past. They didn't recognize her—the nurses and doctors probably did, but they didn't do much more than nod as she ambled past, towards the doors.

Another blink and she was in the parking lot, moving amongst the silent ambulances towards the little spot besides the cafeteria where Mary liked to take her breaks. She heard them well before she saw them. There were two of them there tonight, Mary and a large, squat guy with thick arms and a long, sloping forehead that led down to a pair of wide eyes, sparkling as he laughed.

"Amy!" Mary said, blowing the smoke in little rings. "Mark here was telling me…." Somehow, even after the double shifts she was putting in these days, Mary had a kind of lilting tone to her voice, as if all the pain and the heartbreak that she daily saw just washed over her without staining.

As Amy reached for the proffered cigarette, her fingers brushed Mary's palms and she dialed down the fatigue slightly, just enough to stop Mary from feeling completely exhausted as she tried to sleep. She took a deep puff, feeling the noxious fumes coiling in her lungs. It wasn't her first time, not the second or the third, but again she still coughed and tried to hide it.

"Thanks, darling," Mary muttered, as she leaned to the side, her shoulders brushing against Mark's. He was so close to her, his hands brushing her shoulders and as Amy stepped back, enveloping them. She hadn't noticed before the way he looked at her, or how she tilted her head just so, so that her contours seemed to fit right into his.

Amy offered a soft thanks to her friend, and turned and began to walk. She wasn't used to noticing these things, the little ways in which people gave themselves away. And so the image of him touching Mary settled like a weight around her throat. It was silly. She had met the woman a couple of days ago, after Leviathan. There was absolutely no reason for her to weeping over this. But she couldn't help it.

The stalks over grass rose above the slippers she was wearing and tickled against her feet. She moved uncaring of where she going. The edges of the hospital's compound were marked by squat walls and beyond that, light hills that swept up from the roads and into the encroaching forest at this edge of the town.

She walked, not wanting to run, through that gates and across the road. The night was unfolding for her now, the cool wind lapping against her face. As the hospital fell further behind her, the silence of the night with its faint chorus of bugs began to envelop her.

She stood there for a long while, away from the roads and the streetlights, from the sounds and memories, in a silence that seemed to spring more from within her than without.

But it was soon broken, for even now, after all that had happened, the desire for her sister still remained, like embers in a cold grate.

Of course they burned, she thought. She kept feeding them, with Mary, with everything that otherwise did.

Somehow, she had to stop.

Eventually, minutes or hours later, she began to walk back. As hospital neared, it gradually effaced the shadows of the night and the clitter of bugs that had become, in just those few lonely moments, so soothing to her. Was that how, she wondered, that bug girl felt?

The hospital flickered past, like the vignettes of a faded album. Foyer, lobby, elevator. She pressed the second floor button, wanting to resume with the lady, and maybe offer that last bit of comfort to her grieving husband.

A moment later the elevator clanged open. A man was shouting by the gurney whose white sheet was bulging from its middle. I know him, she thought belatedly, as he turned towards her. He was the husband.

Things happened rapidly after that. Upon seeing her, the man roared and it seemed like darkness erupted from his mouth, so suddenly it encompassed her vision. Images cohered in black, things of some sort, vast, almost sublime in the sheer extent of their being. She stood, feeling more than seeing them, being assaulted by infinite details of parts that moved and shook in a clunky, geometric pattern through, and into, this space.

A second later, the vision dissipated and a heavy in her chest was added to the confusion that she suddenly felt. The man was looming above her, one splayed palm clutching the right half of his face, while the other was thrust in an arc against her side. And all she could focus on were his screaming eyes.

I should have been able to help him, she thought.

As her hands rose in defence, his fingers stuck her and seemed to knife into her, as if they were filed into points. She almost slumped at the pain, at the sudden squirt of blood, but despite all that all it took was the brush of her thumb against his elbow for him to quieten and tumble into restless unconsciousness.

-0-

Healing the old man was simple enough. He was unconscious by the time Amy reached him, so all she had to do was touch the skin of his face with her fingers and transmute, in a fashion, the compounds Mark had so foolishly injected into something benign. After that, healing the liver damage was trickier—she had no desire to be known as a purveyor of eternal youth, so had to carefully avoid the areas ravaged by age. All in all, she was out of the door in less than two minutes.

"You seem excited," Mary pointed out beside her.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Things better at home? I'm not trying to pry but…."

She hadn't confided in Mary, but it didn't really take much to notice that she wasn't accepting visitors. Her family had come, after the attack, but she had no desire to see either of them.

She was a horrible sister, she knew, for kicking Vicky out when all she wanted to do was sit beside her, protect her as she had done for the most of her life. But she needed to reorient herself. Her mind oscillated between extremes. She was going mad. She needed to run away from her sister, but every time she saw her the urge grew. On that hill with Anne, with the light revealing only parts of her, Vicky had looked so alluring, like a mystery waiting to be unraveled. Even on that short walk up the hospital, after Vicky's anger had burned away leaving her in that confused state where she was pliable to suggestion, Amy had to keep her glance locked onto Anne, for her toes seemed to _dig _into the earth with every step.

Vicky had that effect on her—on people really, for few seemed immune to the attraction she exuded, in both the idea and its exquisitely realized result. Even Anne hadn't been able to help staring at her sister as she left for the cafeteria, and had kept her gaze locked onto Vicky's retreating backside long after it had been lost in the crowd.

They had that in common. It almost made her laugh.

And so, Amy kept sending her sister away—from her hospital, after the attack; from the lobby—and felt glad that she was keeping her distance. But it was taking its toll on Victoria: Gallant's death, their father's condition, and their estrangement.

And so, Vicky raged at her, screaming about the strange and absolutely fucked up choices she seemed to be making, her anger volcanic and as sudden and deep as her concern. And Carol? As always, Carol made the simplest, most pragmatic and absolutely disinterested choice: she hired a bodyguard and left the room.

Amy counted that as an improvement.

Finally, Amy replied, "It's better."

"Ok. I won't pry." Mary let out a deep breath and smiled that wide smile that was so unique to her. "You weren't there for our little smoke break today. Or yesterday—resting? How's the pain?"

"Nothing much. It was pretty superficial; he had no idea what he was doing."

"Cool. Got these clove cigs that smell absolutely heavenly. Join us tonight, yeah?"

For once, Amy was tempted to tell the truth: there was no point it, not after what she'd seen the day before. She had been trying so hard to not be this inscrutable puzzle to herself, to try and understand why she did the things that she did. Why she took up smoking and decided to give it up just as easily when she saw Mary with Mark. Why she reached for a cig when she saw the girl on the hill—

Anne.

She was a cape, obviously, but she had still stood up to Victoria for her. Amy had felt, through the tremors in her fingers as she clasped Anne's hand, that it hadn't been an easy choice. Still, she'd done it, and Amy couldn't stop herself from reciprocating. It had taken a short moment to heal her—the micro-fractures in her shoulders, the numbness in the nerves of her hand—and after that, seeing how exhausted the girl had been, Amy had given her a little boost, converting some of the byproducts of ATP's reactions and a little bit of fat, back into the energy giving molecule.

"See!" Mary exclaimed beside her, making her cant her head to the side. "You can't stop smiling. And now you're blushing, darling! It's not a family thing then, obviously—oh, is it that girl?"

That startled her enough to make her stop. "What? What do you mean?" They were close enough to the nurse's station that a couple of nurses at the fringes of some huddle that was going on turned at the loudness of her voice.

Mary took her hand, and pulled her to a recessed section of the hallway occupied only by a long empty seat. Quietly, she continued, "Darl—" she shook her head, frowning all of a sudden. "I hope you don't think that's some sort of secret, do you? I mean, you are quite obvious with your… appreciation, you know?"

This was, Amy decided, worse than that little slip on the road. "No," she somehow croaked out, "I really don't. Vicky never caught on…. Neither did anybody else."

"Well, family, you know how they can be blind to this sort of stuff, yeah?"

"Yeah, I really do." Amy let out a wry laugh. "So, everybody knows?"

"Hey, it's not a bad thing." Mary had moved closer to her, in an awkward, half-armed attempt at comforting her. "Well, mostly, I think. Nobody really minds, you know—it's a little flattering even." She smiled at Amy that wide, beatific smile. "So, chin up, yeah? Let's go see what they are yapping about."

She moved, Amy trailed slowly behind her.

Victoria had seemed so surprised, with the way Amy had held Anne's hand. That was good. That meant that she hadn't inadvertently given herself away, before this night. And revealing it with Anne by her side….

There were worse things.

They were arguing as she approached. Mark saw her and rushed through the circle to her, speaking in that deep, booming voice of his. He seemed far too animated for someone who had almost killed a man, and Amy worked to keep her disgust from showing. "Now Panacea here, she would know better than you lot." Turning towards her, he asked, "Isn't there this bug-controlling cape going around in the bay? Skitter, Shitter, something?"

Warily, Amy nodded. "Skitter."

"Well, there you go," he said, turning back to the group. "I'm telling you, near the parking all the bugs disappeared for like five, ten minutes. And that's this Skitter's M.O."

Voiced erupted from within the assembled crowd of nurses, "That's such a weakass power." and "You told security?" but Amy was no longer listening.

_Obviously._

She had thought Anne was a new cape, dazed after triggering, still trying to come to grips with a radically changed world. But that wasn't it at all, was it? It couldn't have been that fucking easy.

Those exact wounds. She hadn't healed Skitter's when she'd noticed them, after the fight.

Well, she had now.

Anne didn't seem Skitter at all. There was an earnestness to her that shone in the way she defied one of the strongest capes in the city. That wasn't something a villain would do.

But then Skitter wasn't exactly a villain, was she?

That familiar brown hair falling over those thin, jutting shoulders—Anne was as far from Victoria, or Mary, that Amy could go. And yet, like them, there was something to her that had made Amy stare and had made her so self-conscious of her own stares. But Skitter had seemed so composed throughout, clawing against the aura of an irate Glory Girl to stand beside Amy, to defend her.

Why would she do that? Skitter would have recognized her, given how they'd met in the bank. To stay so close after that…

Amy remembered Armsmaster's revelations, and the way in which the girl had bolted from the accusatory stares of her team. If Skitter had started out as a Hero, perhaps Anne was her way of trying to be heroic?

Nodding and silently mouthing a "bye" to a distracted Mary, Amy walked towards the elevator, lost in thought. Images of the girl came repeatedly to the fore. There was something lovely and fragile in the slight, slim curves of her body. Amy felt her cheeks heat as she recalled the way Anne's still-wet clothes clung to her, and how unabashed she moved, as if it were of no-consequence. To be fair, even wet the large dark clothes were more suggestive than revealing. But still… Amy shook her head. This was not the time.

Despite everything she knew about the girl, Amy couldn't take a chance here, not when there were so many people potentially in danger. If Anne were to pull something like she'd done at the bank, the entire hospital would be in jeopardy. And yet, Amy did not want to simply get her arrested, or worse. And despite Vicky's tentative overtures, she was unsure of how much influence she currently had with her sister.

Finally resolute, she walked with the crowd as the elevator doors opened and pressed for the lobby. Putting her hands in her pocket, she fumbled around for the half-eaten apple and pulled it out. She tried to keep some food with her at all times: it was an easy source for her power. In her fingers, the apple crumbled into mist.

The elevator dinged and as the doors parted, the lobby came into view. She waited as people rushed out, letting the spray settle onto her skin. It wouldn't take long.

Carol was standing there, beside the reception, her gaze panning across the lobby. She was decked out in uniform, as though she were looking for a fight.

Amy passed by her, not sparing her a glance.

She could not forgive Carol for putting those words in Vicky's mouth, for making her sister so suspicious of her motives. She had known for a while what Carol thought of her, but to poison Vicky against her as well? That was something she would never forget.

Outside of the cafeteria doors, she waited. By now, if Anne had planted any bugs on her, they would be getting overloaded with the mist she had created; tired and languid, slow to follow orders. But if she hadn't…. Well, Amy would soon know that too.

_There! _A fly weakly buzzing past her right shoulder. She enveloped it with her hand.

The seconds stretched on as she worked it over with her power.

Could she still afford to give the girl the benefit of the doubt? As always, the implications struck her after the loud, messy periods had passed, as she realized what all she had lost, and what she now had to do.


	5. 1-4

**Somewhere I have never travelled 1.4**

**AN: **I was having a hell of a time with this chapter so I decided to read some Bellow. So if I describe somebody's chest as robust, please excuse me: I've got Saul in my soul.

* * *

The chair scratched the floor as I pushed back, moving out of Amy's range. I forced myself to calm down, to meet Amy's gaze with some modicum of composure. She was still frowning as she turned back to her sister.

"You called Carol," she said, "Why?"

Glory Girl replied after a moment, keeping the half-eaten sandwich back in the plate. "She was worried. You know how she can get."

"Yeah, I know _exactly_ how she gets. And being worried for me is not one of her usual responses. Maybe _of _me_ —_"

"Hey!" People were turning towards us, breaking that desultory pallor that the cafeteria otherwise had. Seeing the commotion that her loud response had garnered, Glory Girl quieted down, and hissed, "Mom's been trying, okay? You don't know how she was after we heard about your attack —"

"Victoria, stop." I felt almost forgotten as the two sisters stared at each other. "Not now, okay? Please."

"Ames." Glory Girl's voice was soft, and I could feel the itching under my skin, the urge to run, dissipate. _Had she been using her aura? _I stepped further back, trying to clear my head. I eyed Amy: she didn't seem the least bit affected by it, save for a reddish tinge on her cheeks – the remains of her anger? "When she saw you after the attack, she…" Glory Girl trailed off as her eyes flicked towards me. "You're right. But we'll talk about this, okay?"

Tersely, Amy nodded. "Later. Could you go stall her?" As Glory Girl just sat there, Amy added, "Just want to talk to Anne for a while, okay? Still have the bed for one more night, so I'll come home tomorrow."

"Okay." Standing and moving to Amy's side of the table, Glory Girl added, "I'll wait in the lobby. Maybe after you're done, we can talk in your room about… everything?" Her hands were clutching Amy's shoulders and there was a hopeful turn in her voice. The harsh light of the cafeteria made her look wan and brought out the slight puffiness of her eyes.

But Amy had flinched at her sister's touch. "Sure," she eventually replied, as Glory Girl hands fluttered above her shoulders. It was a kind of agreement that was worse than an honest rejection.

If Emma had tried to apologize, I wondered, would I have rejected her advances? If I were certain it was not a ruse, not some sort of trick… But that was a foolish thought. You can't go back. I think Amy had learned that as well, and was now trying to place some distance between her family and herself.

While I still didn't know what those three words – humiliation, shame, heartbreak – referred to, I was getting a better idea of what they had resulted in. Amy moved cautiously, sitting and hunching over the table, her hand extended towards the sandwich Glory Girl had left behind.

The manner in which she'd affected my power earlier had faded and I had countless bugs around me, poised to attack. They couldn't attack or even threaten her, not if she could disable me like that, but there were enough people around us. There was another form of leverage I could use, but even the thought of disrupting the hospital's power supply made me feel queasy. I also had a few shots I could take at the psyche of the girl in front of me.

But none of that was what I wanted to do. Not now; not again.

So, I just stood there, waiting for her to speak. A few people were still watching us, but they were less active spectators now. Maybe they'd lost interest when Glory Girl had left; maybe, we had been quiet for too long.

"You want to leave?"

"What?"

Amy tilted her head towards the door at the other end of the cafeteria, and repeated, "Let's go. It was nicer outside."

It took me the span of a deep breath to contemplate my answer. "Okay."

We meandered through the spaces between tables, with me following her, towards a small door in the corner marked 'Employees Only'. It opened into a shadowed corridor, beyond which a lone streetlamp illuminated the parking lot, with its rows of silent ambulances. She moved by a nearby pillar, standing at the edge that roofed corridor, her face gleaming in the light. I stayed back, leaning against the hospital wall, out of her immediate range: even if she lunged for me, I would have time to react. She fumbled around in the outer pockets of her coat and retrieved a pack of cigarettes, and proffered it without even looking in my direction.

"No, thanks."

She smoked. She coughed and spluttered, but she smoked. She didn't try to silence her awkwardness now, giving these loud hacking coughs every once in a while. And as the embers fell, the little motes swirling, the cig gradually shortened.

In a way, this was the end. I was certain she knew whom I was, and unless I could keep her from disclosing my identity to the world, I could be in PRT lock-down before daybreak. Conceivably, she could put me there herself: from someone like Amy, all it would take was a touch.

I ran down the list of what I could do protect myself: I could incapacitate her, string her up in my webs, but what would that accomplish? She had my name, and more importantly, she knew what I looked like. It would be trivial for the PRT to now track me down.

Would they, I wondered, offer me a deal, something of the sort that Shadow Stalker had gotten? In the grand scheme of things, I hadn't done anything to earn me too harsh a sentence, but you could never predict what an organization like the PRT could do. Despite my intentions, I hadn't walked the straight and narrow, but it had always been in service to that larger cause – capturing a group of villains, unmasking Coil. I could tell them about it all, reveal what I knew about Dinah and her abilities.

I shook my head. It surprised me to realize that I didn't want to tell them, not if there were alternatives. I would rather face Coil alone than go to the PRT, to people like Armsmaster.

Would that reduce the chance that Dinah would be saved? Possibly, but there were scenarios I could conceive in which the discretion would help. Either way, I was willing to take the risk.

Not for the first time in the night I wondered what that said about me.

Again, I would think about it later. Right now, I had to convince the girl in front of me. She had sent away her sister, and that made me hopeful to the point that I was standing here, preparing a defence.

Her voice startled me. "You look like you're going to make a speech."

"Do I?"

She took a deep drag, and then flicked the cig towards me. I jolted to the right, but the thing had arced down and landed near where my foot had been.

"Would you mind?"

I stared at her. _What the hell? _

She made a grinding motion with the front of her right foot.

_Oh. _Was this her attempt at establishing a position of dominance? If it were, it was a... strange one. Nevertheless, I did as she asked.

"So, are you?"

"What, Speech? No."

"Hm. That's what you did at the hospital. You tried to _reason _out of being treated like a villain."

C_onfirmation. _I closed my eyes, seeing the streetlamp as a hazy spot on my eyelid. For a moment, all I could hear where the deep breaths I was taking.

"People don't really change." I opened my eyes. She was facing me now, with the streetlight glaring across the right of her face, while the rest remained deep in shadows. The place around us was dark - darker than it would have been had the hospital lights been lit. There was a graveyard silence in the ear, and all the noises seemed distant, far-off. And in that silence, she spoke, her words slow and measured. "I see them at their most defenceless, when they really can't put up a pretense or show. And I think... I think it's made me good at reading people, understanding how they work."

"Do you… really understand?"

"What? You don't think I do? I may not be Tattletale, but I get it."

I sighed. "Okay." I realized suddenly that my arms were quivering. I clenched them into fists, and tried to keep the shivers in check. That she hadn't yet ratted me out to Glory Girl was the only solace I had. Maybe she did want to hear what I had to say.

Or maybe she had just wanted to get me out of the hospital, away from potential hostages. Thinking over my words carefully, I began, "I -"

She interrupted me almost immediately. "Why did you stay, on the hill? You could have just left."

_I stayed because I was stupid. _But somehow, I didn't think that would get me what I needed from her. But what would? Like Glory Girl, she seemed to be looking for something from me. Maybe she wanted some sign that I reciprocated her obvious attraction? I could play that up, pretend to be interested in her…

I tried to find a vague enough answer. "I liked the solitude."

"And after I disturbed it?"

I shrugged. "Still better than most places in the city right now."

Her eyes narrowed, and she pushed herself away from the pillar. And because that forward step made the light fall against her back rather than parts of her face, I saw less of her now that she was closer. "I called somebody to check the volunteer list, you know? Surprise. You weren't in there. That a lie too?"

Visions of my days swam in my mind, the hours after angry hours I'd spent bandaging people, distributing food, and helping in any little way I could. It was stupid, but her cavalier tone prickled at me. How she and almost every other Hero I'd met seemed to believe that being a decent person was the sole prerogative of the so-called 'good guys'. I tried to keep that strange and sudden fury in check as I spoke, "No. I help, just not at this hospital."

"What, you're an underage doctor too, as well as a supervillain?"

I took a deep calming breath. "I give first aid. And I help with the charts."

She paused for a beat. "You're not lying."

"I have no reason – scratch that, I have every reason to, but no, I'm not. I've helped, during and after Leviathan. I stay in a shelter because I can't bear to go back home. And you're now going to ruin my life all because I wanted to help you." By the end, I was aware I was shouting at her. I could feel the bugs swarming towards us and I paused their advance.

She had taken a couple of steps back, out of the shadows. Her right hand was plunged into her coat. _Did she have a weapon in there? _I brought the bugs closer: if she did have a weapon, I could use them as decoys. Not the first time in the night I regretted moving out of the shelter without even my mace to defend me: what was I thinking?

She waited for moment before speaking. "Let's walk?"

The question bubbled out of me before I could stop it. "Why?"

She answered just as rapidly. "I liked walking with you."

It took me a moment process that. Thoughts were churning in my mind, and I felt like I was blushing. This had to be a ploy. She was drawing me away from the hospital. Maybe she felt she was limiting my potential for hostages?

Or maybe, she was just giving me the benefit of the doubt. That's what I'd asked the Heroes to do, time and time again, hadn't I? Shouldn't I be willing to grant some back?

There were bugs under each and every one of those ambulances, along with the cars that dotted the parking lot. I tried not to think of them as I followed her.

To the left was us was the road we'd originally followed to enter into the hospital's compound. I could see the slope of the hill I'd sat on blanked in the dim hazy light of the streetlamps. But I'd been sitting further off, closer to the crest. "How'd you know I was there, earlier?"

She followed my gaze. "I like to walk around that place. It's peaceful in the night."

Beyond the parking lot were the lawns. The grass crunched beneath us and I followed her dimming outline as we passed beyond the reach of the streetlight.

The wind, I think, lulled me into a false sense of calmness because it felt strange when she began to speak again. "I know you think of yourself as a hero, but you've hurt people. Can you really tell me all your choices were justified?"

"They were when I made them."

"Then don't you think you made them too quickly?"

With that person in the lobby - Brandish, presumably - Glory Girl was finally moving through the doors and into the foyer. I could track their every moment, and yet the person walking beside me was blind to me, in almost every sense. "At the time I thought they were the right choices. I have regrets about the way some of them turned out, but I didn't make them lightly."

"So, what, you're making the wrong choices for the right reasons…"

"Something like that."

"And when you helped me?" Amy's tone switched from vaguely accusatory to something else.

"That was," I paused, weighing about how much I could reveal. "… different. It wasn't right, what Glory Girl was doing. I had to help. Though after talking to her, I'm not really sure I did."

"You did," Amy asserted. "I know you don't know why but you did."

Reaching the edge of the lawns, Amy turned, away from the road and the hill. I followed, trampling through the grass.

"Where are we going?"

"Nowhere, really. The path's pretty much circular."

"It's just grass."

"Well, sure. But if you follow the walls you get right back where you started. So, sort of like a path, right?" Her voice was light, airy. I struggled to match my tone to hers.

"Okay."

The clouds from the rain that had earlier fallen had pretty much dissipated by now and the velveteen sky sat above us, sprinkled with stars. With so much of the city without electricity, I could easily make out all the constellations I remembered mum showing me once, those many years ago.

Her voice jolted me out the memory. "When did you figure out I knew?" she said, moving close enough that I could feel her coat brush against my fingers. "Because I saw you weren't surprised."

"I knew." It was easier to attach motives to her movements now, long after the fact. "On the second floor, you slowed down, first while talking with that nurse, then after speaking to a crowd of people. You hesitated, as if you were no longer sure of what to do. When the elevator opened, it took you a lot longer than anybody else to move out. And then there was that thing you did right before you entered the cafeteria."

"Oh," she replied after a while, chuckling nervously. "Okay. Freakish Orwellian surveillance aside, once you knew, I'm assuming you started pulling in bugs to use these people as leverage?"

I swallowed before replying, "Yes."

"See," she was shaking her head, and strands of her hair brushed against my shoulder, "that's what I don't get. Even if, say, I don't know the context to your previous actions, how do you do something like what've done tonight and still think of yourself as agood person?"

"Maybe I'm not. But despite knowing what you could do to me now…" I shook my head. "I know I can be violent, make the ugly choice but – and this sounds like an excuse– but there are reasons for the way I do things, and they started long before I got my powers. You don't see this side of things, the way people distrust you, the way they _bully _you, and think they're in the right just because they happen to label themselves as good. But look at Armsmaster, and what he did. Look at what your sister was doing." I paused, taking a breath to recover. I could feel myself shivering, stuttering a little. "I know I've done things which have turned out absolutely _wrong. _But I didn't know, I thought I was helping. Every time, I thought I was h-helping."

Her hand snapped out to grab at me. I felt it against my side and I jumped back, losing my balance and tumbling to the ground.

_Was this it?_ I stopped my bugs from rushing in.

"You fell, didn't you?" I heard the concern in her voice; she didn't sound like she was condemning me. "You're so, I don't know, _cautious._" A moment later there was a light shining on me, at I just sat there trying to will the mortification away.

"Come on," she said, extending an arm that shimmered in the light of her phone. "Are you cold? I think your clothes are still a bit wet."

I shook my head, took her hand and helped myself up.

_Nothing_ happened.

I couldn't see much of her, just her curled fingers around the body of her phone and the outlines of her face in the dim reflected light. She was still holding my hand.

She doubted me, but she was giving me space and time to explain myself. Was it sad when something as simple as that seems like the breaking point? She might not agree with me; she may even condemn me, but I could tell her my story.

I wanted to tell her. I desperately wanted her to _know. _

"I know it's hard for you to think of my choices as good, but if you're willing to hear me out, I'll tell you why I thought they were the right choices, at the time."

Amy was in the middle of putting back her phone when I spoke. The light that had just illuminated me, now shone against her face, leaving shadows slanting from above her lips to across the eye. I could see the brown of her eyes turn towards the hospital.

_Oh, _I realized. _Her sister was waiting. _

I did not know what she thinking or how she was weighing the choices. I tried to imagine what I would do, if this was a reconciliation I could be having, with Dad, with Emma. With the Undersiders.

Eventually, she turned towards me. Her lips had extended into a sort of half-smile. With my fingers in her hand, she began to walk again, away from the hospital, away from her sister, on that nebulous path of grass and mud.

And slowly I began to speak.


	6. Accretion 2-1

As before, a huge thanks to Atlan, Brain_Caster, and theBSDude for helping me trim this shaggy thing into something I actually kind of like. However, I've added a bit to this chapter _after _they returned it, so there may still be errors. If you come across any, please don't hesitate in shooting them across.

Accretion 2.1

The memorial stood atop Captain's Hill, a staid stone monument gleaming under the four lights that circled it. As I walked up the gentle slope the shadows beneath my feet brightened into stalks of grass, tipped with dew and swaying in the wind. The hill was high enough that only the crescent of the bay was visible that across its edge, with a few lights glaring from the dark shambles of the dock.

Here, though, away from the pungent stench of crowded hospitals and streets specked with pools of sewage, the air was cool and light. I took deep breaths, letting the air curl up inside my chest before exhaling. I missed my morning runs, the light, deft steps of my feet against the boardwalk and the languorous fatigue that succeeded it.

My fatigue these days had entirely different sources.

I blinked as I approached the memorial, my eyes slowly adjusting to the light. It was smaller than I'd expected, the smooth wet stone gleaming under lights that seemed to pool within the grooves of words. Around it were flowers, some sitting in thick bouquets, while others, single stems, swung in the breeze or were crushed into the mud under careless footsteps.

There were so many names here. My heart clenched as I moved around the memorial, tracking their endless progression along its four faces. There were people here I'd run across before, people I'd tried to save on the battlefield. But not successfully.

Would Dinah's name be added to that list tonight?

I felt myself shiver and buttoned the jacket I'd worn over my costume. Though both the people coming tonight knew exactly what I looked it, there was no point in letting myself be seen in a clandestine meeting with capes. My bugs scoured the hill, surveying as far as the parking lot before retreating to the hill's base: There were a few people here, mostly on the far side around and above that parking, distant enough that once Amy and Lisa arrived, we would seem to them at best as vague, indistinct figures.

I stepped quickly, moving out of the glare of the lights.

To the right of the monument was the barrier that bordered the edge of the hill, a few paces from the start of the escarpment that led in a lethal slope to the docks below. There were a few viewfinders, grey and creaky things, along the long spread of the railing. I resisted the urge to use them to find my house: I had looked for Dad in the afternoon and he had been alright. Working in the docks, he was an overseer and friend to people far stockier than he was; their company would keep him safe from the violence that had erupted all across the Bay.

In a way, this violence wasn't something people hadn't expected: multiple gangs vying for the same small piece of ground? The conflagration was bound to eventually erupt. Doing it sooner rather than waiting for somebody else just gave you that crucial advantage.

But the Merchants were being utterly vicious about it, breaking the unwritten rules, hurting people. It would be stupid, if it weren't so horrifying.

I stepped away from the viewfinder, gripping the railing and leaning forward, letting the breeze curl its way through the hair that my costume exposed.

Dinah was somewhere below me, trapped because of something I had participated in. I knew the blame wasn't mine alone to shoulder, but that did nothing to stop her from materializing as I closed my eyes.

I stood there, at the edge of a hill, my gaze pointed at the cut where the horizon parted the black of the sea from the shimmering, star-sprinkled velveteen of the sky.

Lisa was exactly on time, moving up to the memorial where she stood staring at one of the faces of the obelisk for a long moment. I waited until I was sure that this was more of a symbolic act than her wanting to read the names inscribed there. Then I sent my bugs to her, guiding her to where I was standing.

"This was not how I wanted to see you again," she said, as came up to me. Her domino mask did little to hide the wan pallor of her face and her blonde hair was stringy, slick against the sides of her neck. "When you told me to wear my costume I… sort of freaked out. Assumed the worst."

"That is?"

"That you'd joined the Protectorate. Were going to turn us over. That tonight would be some sort of warning, maybe, or worse." I tried not to react to that. "I know. I'm sorry. For so many things."

"You don't need to apologize," I said. "I planned to screw you guys over; I can understand your suspicions."

"But I knew you wouldn't, that you'd changed your mind. Me? I've lied to you, manipulated you. And… but, you know that. How do you know that already?"

I gave her a small smile; it was lost beneath my mask. She got it, regardless. "I talked to somebody about a few things. She helped put it all in perspective. It was stupid of me to try and deceive you, once I knew what kind of powers you had. I was… well, I think you know how I was, better than I do."

"She." Lisa frowned. "Cape or..." she said, trailing off.

From the base of the hill, there was a figure moving with long, purposeful strides towards the monument. Noticing my distracted gaze, Lisa immediately asked, "She's here?" Then turning towards the monument, she continued, "A cape, then?" I could imagine her eyes narrowing as she spat out her suspicions. "It's not Faultline is it? No that doesn't make sense…"

"It's not Faultline."

"Who else? You won't join the gangs, so Wards? No, not that either. New Wave? Yes. Fuck! She: Glory Girl? No, not after what she did at the Bank—"

"Amy," I said, turning back to gauge her reaction to it. "Panacea."

Lisa stood silent for a moment before moving to the railing. "That's... even worse," she added, staring down into the city. "Glory Girl is a more familiar kind of thug, you can anticipate her, especially _you_. Panacea…" she cocked her head towards me and continued, "You remember what I said at the Bank, right? She—"

"Don't." Amy had hinted at her issues last night, and after I'd told her mine, I had wished she would reciprocate. Still, this was not the way I wanted to find out about them. "This is not why I called you."

"No. You want me to help you against Coil." Her voice was clipped, gaze sharp. "You told her?"

"Almost everything."

Her arms fell slack to her sides. Her gaze continued to remain riveted upon me, examining me in that intense and peculiar way that she does.

"It was last night," I said, having a sudden urge to explain it to her. The words failed me after that: it was hard to explain when I didn't even understand it myself.

Her hand moved up to massage her temple and turned away from me, cursing.

"A strange night," I added, when she stopped, wondering if she'd blurt it out… whatever she'd understood from me. I'd tried all morning to understand my actions, but I think they passed too close to my pet issues for me to be objective about them. Lisa would be blunt, scalpel-like, but she would unearth the truth.

But then, the truth was not always that useful a companion.

My thoughts tumbled into that familiar tangle: did I need the full-truth about Amy to continue whatever this was? For now, it was comforting, kind of exciting, and… useful. A pang of disgust surged through me.

That's how Amy found us. She was wearing a dark sweatshirt and pants. A hood shrouded most of her face. She pushed it back as she reached us, shaking her head and rearranging her hair with her fingers. Her gaze flitted rapidly from Tattletale to me, and she gave me a slight half-smile.

Lisa was more composed by then, and impassive, in a way she rarely otherwise is. Weighing her words, she began, "Coil will know; you know that right? If you start posing any significant threat to him, he will know. And he _will _retaliate."

Amy's glare bore into Lisa. It would have been so much easier if she hadn't asked to be here: now, I had to convince_ both _the people in this meeting. "I know," I replied. "We talked about it last night. We'll keep it low-key, not involve the major players—keep out of his radar. Given the… state she was in after just a few questions, I don't think he can ask Dinah about everybody in the city, especially those he has little cause to suspect."

"And when she tells someone? Her _sister_?" There was a peculiar inflection on sister, and Amy bristled and stepped forward, pushing against my shoulder.

"We need to be careful. I get that," Amy replied, the venom in her tone blatant. "Do you care that there's a kid drugged and kidnapped and who knows what else because of you?"

Even in the dim light I could see Lisa's mouth tense before she turned away. I gripped Amy's shoulder and she sighed and slumped at my touch.

"I know you hate what he's done," I said, my voice gentler, consoling. My fingers were clenched, and I could feel my heart beat faster and faster as Lisa barely reacted to my words. "And I know there are people who depend on what he can do for them. But he will keep on escalating—Dinah, the Empire—and the more fucked up things we keep quiet on, the more liberties he will take. And soon, it won't be about the money or the other things certain people needed from him, because we'll be too deep in it to step away."

Lisa stayed still, leaning on the railing and staring at the city. The wind was picking up, breaking against the bluff below and emitting this soft, diffuse whine that broke the silence between us. When Lisa replied, her voice had a sad, wry cast to it. "How are you so sure we aren't there already?"

It took me a while to answer. The rest of the Undersiders had tacitly condoned this with their silence earlier, after we'd found out about Dinah. Still, it had been over a week now, and I was almost certain that her image festered in some of their minds, as it did in mine.

"You've come here. You're listening to me—to Panacea." She looked up and I continued, meeting her gaze. "I know want things to change and you'll convince the others. Gure? He just being a stubborn asshole."

Startled, Lisa let out a small laugh, before sighing and pointing vaguely towards Amy. "Does she need to be here for this? It's just, there are so many things I wanted to talk to you about, but you're going and screwing it all up. It's not a good time to go against Coil: we have no real leverage and he's too strong, and that's aside from having a precog."

"Dinah Alcott." Amy piped up, having moved beside—no, slightly behind me. "Her name's Dinah Al—"

"You made your point. Get off your high fucking horse." Lisa snarled. "You have enough fucked up shit Skitter here doesn't know anything about either."

"And don't want to." I eyed Lisa: she was tense again, her hands bunched into fists. "Amy, back off, okay? Bringing it up repeatedly isn't gonna change anything." Amy glared at me for a moment before stepping back, her arms crossed in front of her chest. I turned towards Lisa. "With Dinah's powers, I don't think there can ever be a good time. But that doesn't matter. I'm still willing to take the risk."

"I'm not." I closed my eyes, my heart drumming rapidly as she continued to speak. "If I leave the Undersiders, join you, he'd know, probably within the day, certainly the next."

"Yes," I said, keeping my voice controlled. "You can't leave them; you need to keep up pretenses. But we can work around it."

"I know."

"Then why won't you?" Amy interjected again. She sounded calmer now, less antagonistic than she had earlier been. "Some things are worth the risk."

"Is that so?" Lisa replied, with a faint hint of that vulpine grin of hers on her face. "Consorting with known villains: you're certainly taking the big risk, aren't you Amy?"

I felt like slapping her. "Tattletale," I started, but Amy cut me off.

"I'm willing to take the risks," she said. "_All_ of them."

That grin of Lisa's dissolved into something warier. She took a long moment to speak. "You know all the Undersiders might not agree, right? Not right now, not after how your… allegiances were revealed."

I had thought of that, but it hurt to hear it said. "I do."

"And… you're willing to do this? Go against them if it comes down to it?"

It was obvious to whom she was referring. Yet, there was no doubt in my mind that I would oppose Grue, should it come down to that. "Some things matter more," I replied, with greater nonchalance than I was capable of affecting at the moment. "Coil has the Travelers, besides. If it comes down to an open fight, we would have already failed."

"Okay," Lisa said, subdued now. "How are you going to do it? He has a precog, how do you beat that advantage?"

Something was off about the way she spoke. "Are you with us, then?"

She didn't respond. "You know what the Protectorate is doing isn't working, right? Coil's got the right idea, even if the way he's going about it is… aggressive."

"So, you were wrong about him," Amy said.

Lisa replied after a beat, annoyance tinging her voice as she scowled at Amy. "Yeah. I'd read him… wrong. I think I know his goals, I agree with most of them, but I didn't know he'd go so far to achieve them."

"What do you think you know, for certain?" I asked.

"His power: I'm sure of that. A few things about his endgame. And Amy, you want a good reason not to go to the Protectorate? He's got infiltrators in there." Lisa grinned at the way Amy's head snapped towards her. "Attacking him right now, when there's nothing to limit how he reacts, is _suicidal_."

The silence festered between us after that. Lisa was gazing at me so intently I think even Amy picked up on it, turning towards me as she did a moment later.

My eyes narrowed as I pondered over her words. I think she was referring to the last time I'd jumped in to a situation that in all likelihood should have gone extremely badly for me. But that didn't make sense: when I'd fought Lung there were other considerations that had overridden the calculus of self-preservation. I had gone all in _knowing _how terrible the outcome could be, but that had still been better than the alternative—I would rather suffer myself than let children do it in my place.

This, here, was me making that same choice again. I felt Amy's hand slot into mine.

"You okay?" she whispered, and I nodded back and felt myself smile beneath my mask.

"You're not going to change your mind," Lisa said, her shoulders sagging.

"No," I replied, stepping towards her, Amy's fingers slipping from my grasp. "Don't know why you think I'm suicidal, but this? This isn't the kind of thing I can walk away from; you know that. You have to think about the others too, and I get it. Makes it harder for you."

"Yeah."

"Doesn't change anything though, does it? We still fucked up." I took a slow steady breath. "In that whole cops and robbers scenario, what do you think this makes us?"

After a moment of stillness, Lisa's lips stretched into a long bitter smile. Her eyes closed and she turned back towards the city, the sea breeze playing with her hair. I joined her, letting my shoulders tentatively nudge against hers, and eventually putting my arm across her shoulders. Beneath us, our city stretched, a patchwork of light and dark extending towards a sparkling bay.

"This is a change," she responded.

I started to pull my arm away. "Sorry, I—"

"Don't. It's good." She was shivering slightly. I placed my arm back where it had been.

Eventually, Amy joined us, and Lisa took one look at her began chuckling.

"What?" I said, as Lisa moved uncomfortably close to me.

"She's jealous. It's hilarious, and fucking disturbing." I tensed, the blush rising to my cheeks. But Lisa continued, her voice harsher still. "You're going to tell her, Panacea. She deserves to know before she gets further into this, whatever the fuck it is. And just know if I see a single hint of your power on her _like that_, I will tear you down."

Mercifully, Amy just nodded in response.

Lisa turned towards me, still pressed up against my side "I'll talk to the guys tomorrow, see what kind of support we can get. But some of them have other… people they are far more concerned about."

"I know."

"Okay," she sighed and added, finally moving back. "What do you have so far?"

"A few general ideas. Dinah is a problem, but there are ways to deal with that. And Coil has definitely not accounted for someone like Amy. We just need to find him—I'm assuming he has bases, hideouts, other than that incomplete one we went to before the attack. That's where we need you: I need all the intelligence you have about him, his bases, his powers, his habits, what he frequents, everything."

Lisa was looking at me strangely. "I don't know most of that. He keeps me as far away from his personal life as he can."

Amy let out a sigh. "Then what can you tell us? Or was this entirely a waste of time."

Lisa scowled again. "Why don't you track The Travelers? Don't know where they live right now, but I'm assuming he keeps them close by, given the kind of arrangement he has with them."

Which is?" I asked, before shaking my head. "Doesn't matter. I still need to get a visual on them to identify them, so either I know where they are going to be beforehand… or I get really, really lucky."

"Can't you use your bugs for that? For surveillance?"

"Doesn't work. I can't see through them. Their senses are too incompatible."

"That doesn't make sense… huh. Okay, you don't know. It's kind of weird, but you've done it before, after Bakuda. You were able to see _and _hear through the bugs then."

I frowned. "I don't remember that."

"You were hurt," Lisa pointed out, but that still made no sense. I had no conscious recollection of it, and I knew I couldn't do it now. That just left one disturbing possibility: that the part of me that granted me powers did that through me. Still, the fact that Lisa was willing to volunteer this information was… comforting.

I leaned against her, letting my head fall gently on her shoulders. She tensed, but her arms encircled me a moment later. "Thank you," I whispered, feeling the tension that had kept me awake the entire night and prowling through the city by day ease slightly.

She whispered back a moment later, her words mixing with the gusts of wind and caressing my face.

~0~

Amy had been rather silent since Lisa had revealed Coil's power, growing tenser as the structure of our plan was gradually outlined—and who could blame her? Two roads diverged and he had the ability to take both. That conferred him with an advantage of a magnitude even Lisa found hard to fully explain. Still, I couldn't help but think how sharp a contrast her prolonged reticence as we ambled down the hill made with her reaction after she'd learned the truth about me last night. And after my confession had finally run its course, we had been too far from the hospital to trudge back. I'd suggested the shelter I'd been in, and Amy had agreed, a quiet moment later.

Was she having doubts, I wondered. The image that had been painted of Coil loomed above us—a deft, intelligent adversary with powers and resources seemingly far beyond what we could muster. If she was having second thoughts, then she might retreat back to her family, reveal all that she knew.

Turn me over.

"I'm not being fair, keeping this from her," she suddenly said. "This daring superhero stuff she does quite well."

She was gazing straight ahead, her voice troubled.

"But you're right, he probably asks Dinah about her—or at least the New Wave." She stopped. "Wait. Wouldn't he know me in that case…"

"Dinah's power works with images. You won't be on the frontlines, and he won't have cause to ask her to imagine anything more."

"Oh," she replied, letting out a relieved breath. As we reached the base of the hill and she turned towards the parking lot. "You didn't tell me that before."

"Tattletale just told us," I said, trying to reply calmly to the slightly accusatory tone.

The grass leveled off into the tarmac of the parking lot and a few people, ensconced in cars with fires smoldering in sheared-off cans placed in front of opened doors, turned their wary gazes towards us. Unlike the rest of the hill, which was either blanketed in shadow or under the gaze of the cold light of the memorial, the lively flicker and steady crackle of the many fires in the lot cast a warm glow over the place, putting it in stark contrast from the sepulchral embrace of the hill.

Still, it was surprising that we were here. "You brought a car?"

She blinked back at me. "How else would I get here?"

It was a simple brown thing, squatting in one corner of the lot. It made little beeping noises as she pulled out her keys and unlocked the doors.

"Where are we going?" I said, folding myself onto the seat.

Fumbling with the ignition, she took a moment to reply, her tone nonchalant. "I was thinking you could pick up whatever you have at the shelter and we could swing by my house." She straightened, still facing away from me, and continued, "It's not much, but it's better than the shelter."

I felt my nails bite into the skin of my palms.

She wanted me under her watch, I thought, correcting myself a moment later. _Under her family's watch._

She was not convinced; that tenseness I'd been feeling all day, returned.

The engine spluttered before settling into a low rumble. My swarm was gathering and this time I didn't want to wish it away.

I couldn't take this happening to me again, not now. She had raised my hopes and was now shattering them.

Her hand stayed there, clutching the wheel, as she waited for a reply.

Would she retaliate if I just left? I could hear my long drawn out breaths. But I couldn't do that either. By now, she knew enough that regardless of whatever she decided—informing the Protectorate or her family—they could easily find me.

And Coil would always know, as Lisa had said.

I was trapped, again, but this time I only had myself to blame.

"Okay," I replied, turning my head towards the open window. She released a relieved breath.

We passed through the city in painful silence.

My city blurred around me and the faint wetness in my eyes left blurry vignettes of its shattered remains in my mind.

What had I expected, really, unburdening myself to somebody who had been almost a stranger? I'd languished with that thought the entire day, unable to concentrate at the hospital, despite how short-staffed they had been. After I'd excused myself, I'd gone for a run, pushing past my street and onto Emma's, my gait varying between too-rapid a pace, and slow, labored walks as I'd tried to recover. It hadn't helped, neither the run nor seeing Emma's empty house, partly glad that she had escaped, but mostly hating myself for what I had wanted to do.

My arms trembled and I wrapped them around my shoulders.

"Cold?"

"Yes."

The motors whirled and the windows closed, the wind whistling loud before it silenced.

"We're close."

"Okay."

She was a truly horrible driver, casting long glances my way as she crashed through the speed limits on mostly empty roads. The streets were empty and grey, mottled with streetlights, surrounded by grey buildings that jutted out into an overcast sky.

It was a strange yet familiar helplessness, knowing that your world was going to be crashing around you soon, but unable to do anything about it.

"I've been wanting to try something," Amy suddenly said, after breaking for a aid convoy passing through the intersection. "Can you get a bug in here, on my hand?" I turned towards her, examining her face, hoping that she couldn't see the remnants of any redness in my eyes. Was this another test, or did she plan to do something like she'd done at the bank to me again?

How did it matter? I had to follow her lead if I wanted any chance at influencing the outcome.

I called one of the more delicate bugs perched in the back of the car, along with a wasp that could easily devour it. She continued to speak. "Ever since Tattletale talked about the whole Bakuda incident, I've been thinking: why can't you see or hear through insects?" The bug landed on her knuckle.

"As I said, the senses are too different. I don't know how I did it before."

"Ah, okay, try now, just this one bug." Her tone had changed completely, and the stiffness in her straight-backed shoulders had given way to a more casual slump. Feeling a bit bemused, I indulged her, having no other choice.

"It's the same. Still can't see or hear."

"Huh. Can I get another bug? I guess this one's too small to change fully." Another small bug came to a rest on her hand. "Thanks." Parked in the middle of the street, with the red light having long shifted, she concentrated on her fingers. I felt the helplessness draining away, leaving a small hollow space in which every strange and suddenly animated movement she made registered with a hopeful thrum.

"Now?"

"I..." my voice wavered, my breath picking up. "I see something. It's vague and brown and…"

We stared at the brown of the steering wheel for a moment, before a grin cut across her face and she unbuckled her seatbelt, shifting closer towards me.

"Try now," she said. "And get me another bug."

The bug on her fingers, a misshapen monstrosity in miniature, feebly took flight. As it passed in front of a vent I felt through it a current of air that sent it spiraling. I saw a swirling, dancing, head-over heels image of the car, not pixilated but still vague, with bleeding edges and misplaced colors. And I heard myself speak, the voice loud and alien, but still resolvable into words.

"It's a bit worse than before. Why did you—"

"Wait." She shook her head, her hair bouncing around her still-smiling face. "I've never done something like this before. Can you land that one back on me?" I nodded. It dropped dead the moment it touched her.

"What?"

"I know! Try with this one," she proffered her hand to me, with the third bug sitting on her palm. "I've barely modified it."

I stared back at her: she was still shifting repeatedly. The car seemed too small for the smile on her face.

I tried, the third time. It was worse than before, but still far better than anything I could get from the bugs outside.

"You still see through it, right? Worse, but sight's still there?" I nodded and she relaxed, slumping back against her seat. "You told me about these ways you've used your powers and I realized, you know, besides the bank I've never really done that before, stretched them in any way but the obvious," she paused and giggled slightly. "Fuck, I feel so giddy. It's embarrassing."

"Don't be," I replied, still playing with the bug. I shifted my attention to one of the unmodified bugs outside the car: sights and sounds outside the car resolved into something indistinct—blocks of greys and blacks with pinpricks of yellow and white.

"It wasn't feasible," I continued, "but I'd thought of asking you to modify a truck load of bugs so I could use them for surveillance, but now…"

"That's the best part." She smiled. "We won't need to"


	7. 2-2

**Accretion 2.2**

The car stumbled over the curb as Amy tried to back it into the driveway.

"Damn it," she said, twisting back to pull it into first gear. But it lurched forward again, engine screeching, and I stifled my laugh as she cursed.

"You don't drive much, do you?"

"Not really. Get flown around a lot, kind of… hey, it's not that funny."

The darkness around us was punctuated by wan, widely-spaced streetlights that brushed against porches and settled atop wide, finely-trimmed lawns fronting the large, unscathed homes along the road. Aside from the mostly empty driveways that in neighbourhoods like this would have been brimming with cars, the street looked and felt untouched. I turned away from it, scattering my bugs—few enough as they were here—over the lawns and hedges and into the little ingresses that existed in every house, no matter which zip code I found myself in.

That was, in its own way, comforting.

My bugs scurried into her home as she parked. Headlights dimmed as we stepped out of the car. A lamp near the door smeared its light along the short narrow porch and onto the cobbled path that curved towards the driveway. Amy slammed the door and stepped upon it, moving with quick terse steps.

I caught a fleeting glimpse of her face as she stopped on the path and twisted back.

"This way."

I followed, nudging the car door shut.

It was such a stark contrast: all she had done for most of the ride here had been talk about how we could use our powers, combine them, to save Dinah. Her driving had smoothened, the car streaking along the road with the deft movements of her arms. I'd sat there listening to her wild, outlandish plans as she pondered combining bug with bug, like a kid discovering the wonders of an insect-based lego. All that was just… gone.

She rang the bell only after I stepped onto the landing. A moment later, steps sounded, moving from deep inside the house. It wasn't hard to identify who it was, given the strength of the vibrations in the floor she left in her wake.

"You okay?" Amy's voice was low, frowning at the edges.

I turned my head towards her and nodded. "Tired."

Her freckles stood out in the light, marking the places where her face was pulled and furrowed by worry. It felt strange to be walking into somebody else's family issues like this, when my own festered, but if she needed me to play the buffer here, or as… an exhibit, as proof, then I owed it to her to oblige.

I steeled myself. The door was wrenched inwards, and Victoria stepped forward, clutching the doorway as if she needed it to remain standing. She wore little, just a pair of shorts and a rumpled shirt. As she stood there observing us, the wood began to groan under her fingers.

"I thought," Victoria said, the sharp tone betrayed by redness in her eyes, "you'd be back by eleven. That you cared; that you'd call. Apparently I was wrong. Again."

Amy's reply was unexpectedly curt, her gaze averted from her sister's. "I'm sorry." She moved to where the span of her sister's arm blocked the doorway, not saying another word. Victoria's aura went up a notch, but she still moved flat against the door, giving Amy space to pass through.

It took me a long moment to go in after her.

The wide living room was hardly lit, with a pair of dim lamps flanking the sofa on the left and casting a baleful light against the plain brown curtains drawn over the large bay windows behind it. To the right, the room was in shadow, though I could make out the contours of tables and the lightly glinting frame mounted on the far wall. Amy stooped beside the sofa, her fingers hovering over a series of small, discolored patches on the cushions, before she cocked her face towards her sister.

"He had a bad day," Victoria replied, slamming the door.

Amy spun away.

The aura rose and hit me like a wave. I felt myself back into the shadowy parts of the living room. My bugs reacted, surging, wanting to scurry out of the walls and to my defence, and I somehow pitted myself against that urge, trying to will them into being inconspicuous again. The modified bug squatted upon the wooden lintel above the windows, feeding me a dim blurry image of flaxen hair and pale skin. As I continued to move back, wanting to escape from the living room, something struck me against the thighs and I cried out, turning towards it.

The table resolved into dim focus.

"You all right?" Amy's voice, so much softer than the previous harsh grate had been, moved closer to me as I turned back to face them. "Come on, my room's that way. You want something to eat?"

I shook my head.

The room continued to press in upon me, the light sharpening the edges of the walls. My gaze flicked across the room, moving from the shadowed parts to where Amy stood beckoning, registering the details. Beside me, pieces of paper and strips of medicine littered the table, along with a bowl that had a wet, dripping spoon extruding over its rim.

_Huh._

My gaze stopped on the floor, at the depressions scattered across the room in close oval shaped pairs with cracks radiating from the edges.

I could feel myself relaxing as my focus drifted, moving from the effects of Victoria's aura to, well, her legs: they were long and soft, and lightly dimpled at the knees. Hardly the kind of legs you would associate with immense strength.

And yet, all over the floor, the everyday consequences of living with somebody with brute powers.

How did she control them? I couldn't turn my perception of bugs off without some conscious effort—was she always super strong, unless she willed herself weak?

That could explain some of the things I'd heard about her.

Amy coughed loudly, and I looked up. She had paused beside the sofa, close to her sister, and was scowling. "My room's that way," she said. "I'll be there with some food in a minute." Confused at the sudden change in tone, I just nodded.

Victoria's voice interrupted me before I could get halfway across the room.

"Anne, erm, stop for a second, okay?" Victoria took a deep breath and finally abandoned her post by the door. "Look, I don't mind that you're here, that you guys are going to, erm, whatever, okay? That's fine." As she took a few steps forward, towards her sister, Amy backed away with her eyes wide and fingers biting at her palms. Victoria stopped at her sister's reaction, and clenched her eyes shut. When she opened them a moment later, her throat visibly constricted as she spoke. "But this, what you're doing, to Dad, to Mom… it's fucked up Amy."

Amy flinched, but she kept her distance. "Tonight was… a mistake. It won't happen again."

"And yesterday? When you just left me at the hospital? I couldn't believe you did that to me, you know? Not until I saw you just walking with her, not giving a flying fuck that I was goddamned scared shitless that something had happened to you. Again!"

Amy's gaze lowered, pointing at her sister's feet. Her voice was sharp but low, like a blade against the throat. "I don't need to explain myself to you, Victoria. Not anymore."

"'_Not anymore?'_ What the hell does that even mean?" Victoria was shouting by now, and a bug hanging on a doorknob above us swung inwards, into the room. I just stood there, feeling more useless by the second.

Amy sneered in response, a cruel harsh sound. "That's the worst part sometimes—you don't even know! None of you even realize it!"

"None of us…" Victoria repeated the words dumbly. Shaking her head, she continued, "I don't know what you mean. Mark's… Mark. Mom's been frantic about you ever since the PRT told us that villains have been taking interest in how you're living apart—"

"Ah, so that why the bodyguard." Amy's smile contorted. "Was wondering why the sudden concern." She reached for my hand, pointing towards the hallway. "You're not stupid, Vicky. You know what she was frantic about. Losing the best healer in the world? Not good for the image, right?"

Victoria just stood, spluttering out weak denials. Her aura had dissipated, a tide wrenched from shore. Both of them were startled when a voice rang from the staircase.

"No, it isn't," Carol Dallon said, her voice clipped and steps muffled by the carpeted staircase. She stepped into the living room, her gaze pausing on me for long moments, before turning back towards her daughter. "Victoria, the noise is disturbing your father. Could you reassure him, dear?"

Amy's fingers tensed around my arm, hard enough that it would have been painful had I not been wearing my costume underneath.

It took Victoria a moment to comply. She bounded up the staircase, her steps rattling the few pictures hung along the staircase wall. Carol pinched her brow at the noise, but didn't otherwise react.

"I will not have you disturbing Mark with your absence anymore, Amy." Carol said, as soon the sound of the door closing above reached us. "He has grown used to a certain… pattern of care, and you will abide by it. Do you understand?"

Amy tersely nodded.

"Good. Now, your stunt yesterday got Piggot's personal attention. Again." She turned that tense frown my way, her face loosening slightly, becoming less hostile. "You're are the one Amy incapacitated her bodyguard to meet?"

"Yes," I said, and after a moment added, "Ma'am." Somehow, I didn't think Amy would appreciate me explaining how accidental our meeting had been. "I'm Anne."

She nodded curtly.

A thought bubbled a bit hysterically to the surface:

_I'm meeting the parents…_

"You both will conduct your affairs with less...foolishness. Don't want to be called in by Piggot a _third _time_."_

Besides me, Amy bristled. "Foolishness—"

"Calm down," Carol commanded. "I have no issues with your sexuality Amy, just your idiotic attempts at undermining your security. The Merchants know of your… distance from the New Wave, and as they've shown, they have no compunctions in attacking any place to secure their objectives. Nor, I doubt, will any other gang in this city, where you are concerned."

_Oh._

For some reason, Amy remained calm and just mumbled her assent. "Okay."

"Now, Anne, I'm assuming your parents know where you are right now?" I stilled. "No, then." She exhaled deeply as Victoria's hopefully face appeared over the bannister. "Some ground rules, girls: Anne, you are not to come upstairs. Those are mine and my family's personal spaces and I will not have them violated."

I nodded. But i_f Amy's room was on the ground floor then…_

"No sex, not in the house. I do not want any further disturbances, nor will I have time to clean sheets tomorrow. Do you understand?"

My head bobbed furiously, my cheeks burning. Amy stood beside me, my arm still clenched in her fingers.

"Good." Carol turned, relaxed as she moved up the staircase with all the languorous contentment of a predator that has had its fill. Amy twisted, pulling me along, ignoring Victoria's pleading "Ames…"

~0~

I gave the door a wary glance, perched upon the side of Amy's bed.

"Don't worry," Amy said, putting her hand on my shoulder and beckoning my gaze away from the door. "She doesn't have super-hearing or anything." She walked over to the cabinet against the opposite wall, stooped, opened the drawer, and rifled through it, continuing to speak. "Not that it would matter if she did." Straightening, she walked over to the door with a large bundle of blankets and pillows held in her arms and bolted it.

"Do you… want to talk about it?"

"That? Amy smiled, dumping the contents of her arms onto the bed. "It's nothing—not compared to what we're doing. You ready?"

I scooted back, giving her space. It wasn't like I'd never avoid my family issues by throwing myself into something else…Still, it took a moment to switch gears, rewind back to what she had babbled about in the car.

"What for, exactly? Seeing through a few bugs has never been a problem for me. It's just, I see what they see, and that isn't very useful. "

"Could you get me a bug? No, make it two. Thanks." She extended her hand. "Anyway, we know you saw through them that one time, so that just means something's missing. And I think I know how to adapt the way you see to fill in that missing bit."

Still hesitant, I turned, casting my glance over the room and the few bugs I'd called in through the window. The glow of the table lamp softened the contours of her face but there was no softening the hard glint in her eyes or the razor smile cutting a wide swathe above her chin. As before, the bugs landed on her fingers and began to fuse together, becoming an amalgamation of parts supporting a pair of relatively gigantic eyes that gave me a skewed, curving sort of perspective of myself.

The other modified bug was still in the living room, watching Victoria pace by the sofa. Her head kept swiveling towards the hallway, but she did little but clench her hands and resume her stride.

Had Dad felt like that, after I'd run?

"How's the sight now, good, right? Okay, I'll slowly make it more bug-like. See if you can—I don't know—compensate? Fill in the details that are being lost with approximations, guesses. If I'm right, your power should help you with that. "

I nodded. It would be so easy for me to tell her, maybe prod her to go out and comfort her sister. But I was unsure of what she would do. It's so much easier, caring from afar.

The thing on her fingers underwent metamorphosis, turning back into a normal bug. My secondary image of myself and the room behind me fractured as the compound eyes reasserted themselves.

"Too fast." I shook my head trying to blink away the sudden pain. "Slow down."

The degradation stopped, and reversed. "Sorry! You alright?" Her fingers brushed against my temple. I waved them away.

"I'm fine." I took a few deep breaths, feeling the headache subside. "You need to go slower. I think I blacked out for a second there when the eye changed structure."

Her hands retreated and she slumped upon the bed. "Maybe we should get some sleep and continue tomorrow?"

I shook my head, opening the sights of a few bugs roaming outside the window. But, as always they returned mostly gibberish. "No, we can get this. I've done it before, apparently."

"You know this will be harder the more tired you are, right? We're pretty much rewiring the way you see."

For a fleeting moment I thought about asking her to enforce the required changes in my mind. Being able to see a couple of blocks around me would make finding Coil so much easier. But then, I recalled the spots on the sofa and her sister's angry, betrayed glances.

"Besides," she continued, "I know you didn't sleep last night. Being awake like this isn't good for you." She paused, then added, "And I don't think I can be as careful as you need me to be right now."

I hadn't slept, but only because she had been pressed into me, on that narrow mattresses in the shelter. But that didn't matter right now. I could still see her sister, reclined on the sofa outside.

"Okay."

"Thanks." She sighed, pulling on the sheets trapped beneath me. I stood up. "I'm too exhausted to change. You?" I shook my head and she continued, "Anyway, I'm trying to adapt how you interpret the world. Can't give you a timeframe, but I doubt it'll be a day or two."

"Oh." My mind churned, but was unable come up with a response to that. "Maybe it would be quicker if we went to the PRT…."

She pulled the sheet upon her, completing her movements before replying. "I'm not going to the PRT, so stop worrying about that, okay? I… feel stupid _saying_ it, but I'm trusting you with this Taylor… Anne."

I closed my eyes. That was a burden I hadn't carried well, lately.

"And I don't want go to the New Wave either." She twisted, turning her gaze away from me to straighten the bed on the other side, preparing it. I felt the tenseness dig in deeper, and my eyes flicked towards the door before absurdly wandering to the open window. She continued, seemingly oblivious. "And I know Tattletale wants me to reveal everything, and I should, after what you did yesterday, but I can't, not right now. Not—"

"It's family," I cut her off. "It's not like I've told you about dad, either. I get it. That stuff's… hard."

"Yeah." She cast a relieved glance my way. Her eyes were wide open, and the light beside her left every flicker on her face visible to my searching gaze. Her mother's words—her own words from yesterday came rushing forward to fill that momentary silence between us, and I bent, untying my shoes to hide the blush burning down my cheek. But the second modified bug perched atop the curve of the lamp's shade still caught it all: the glimmer on her face and the sudden lidding of her eyes.

I felt myself shiver.

For the second time in the night, she asked, "You cold?"

"No."

I stepped upon the bed between the edges of her feet and the footboard, my knees sinking into the thick blankets. A switch clicked and the lights around us dimmed, leaving a single lamp casting its yearning gaze against her face.

"My clothes are a bit dirty," I piped up, feeling the sheets against the coarse, well-worn weave of what I was wearing.

"It's all right," she replied. And I was suddenly, intensely aware of myself, the movement of my haunches, the curve of my shoulders, and the intensity of her gaze, reflectedto me by that bug.

_Why didn't I just walk around the bed?_

I crawled faster, seeking the shade of the blanket. It was cool and soft and hot against me, and yet I could feel my trembles spread.

_I wasn't ready for this._

I tilted, perching my recumbent form on the side of the bed, as she continued to watch.

"Good night," I said.

It took a while for her to reply.

* * *

**AN:** Really unhappy with this chapter, but at least I can move on.


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